Leah So­rias

Na­ture and beach lovers are turn­ing up their noses at Mac­queripe Bay, once the pride and joy of plea­sure-seek­ers from north Trinidad. Tourists who came for the Christ­mas hol­i­days left dis­ap­point­ed with­out even get­ting to take a dip in the wa­ter. Mac­queripe was con­sid­ered the clean­est, un­pol­lut­ed bay in and around Port-of-Spain, but with­in the last month this rep­u­ta­tion has not been fit­ting. Con­struc­tion work be­ing done to up­lift the face of the bay has caused red sand and silt to seep in­to its wa­ters. The pool of red wa­ter stretch­es as far as 150 yards out­ward, pre­vent­ing swim­mers from even ven­tur­ing in.

The en­tire area around the bay is so full of mud and slush that the sand is in­vis­i­ble. The stair­case lead­ing to the beach has be­come dan­ger­ous to walk on when wet and the rail­way pre­vent­ing vis­i­tors from falling, al­most has been de­stroyed. Mem­bers of the Mac­queripe Ear­ly Morn­ing Swim­mers As­so­ci­a­tion (Mem­sa) are the most af­fect­ed by the pol­lu­tion as they fre­quent the bay ear­ly every Sun­day morn­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Eu­gene Rey­nald, a mem­ber of Mem­sa, the con­struc­tion work en­tails the build­ing of a re­tain­ing wall, a road­way from the carpark to the bay it­self and a ramp that would al­low the el­der­ly to have easy ac­cess to the beach. He said al­though the de­vel­op­ment is wel­comed, it is do­ing more harm than good.

He ex­plained that when projects of an en­vi­ron­men­tal na­ture have to be car­ried out the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny must first be is­sued with a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­ment clear­ance (CEC) from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty. The CEC, he said, would lay down the stip­u­la­tions in an ef­fort to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment. "Among the pro­tec­tion mea­sures is the lay­ing down of a set­tle­ment pond, which will col­lect the de­bris, sand and rock so it will not find its way in­to the sea," Rey­nald said.

No set­tle­ment pond has been laid at Mac­queripe Bay, he not­ed.

"If they had put one down, the red sand would not have made its way in­to the sea," he not­ed. He said Mem­sa made sev­er­al com­plaints to the EMA about the pol­lu­tion, but they re­ceived no feed­back and noth­ing has been done. Rey­nald said he met with Chair­man of Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA), Noel Gar­cia, be­fore the con­struc­tion work be­gan and he was as­sured that con­trac­tors were giv­en a CEC and that no harm was sup­posed to be done to the bay. Him­self a project man­ag­er who has over­seen sev­er­al con­struc­tion projects , Rey­nald said work should not have start­ed at the bay dur­ing the No­vem­ber to Feb­ru­ary pe­ri­od be­cause seas are the rough­est at that time.

"Seas are calm around East­er time and that is the best time to do work. The CDA al­lowed work to start at a bad time," he not­ed. "The EMA should have ad­vised that work should not have been done at this time of the year," he added. On Wednes­day, the road to the bay re­mained closed, pre­vent­ing any­one with ve­hi­cles from en­ter­ing.

Well-loved Mac­queripe

"My wife was talk­ing to a mi­cro-bi­ol­o­gist and he was say­ing the Care­nage beach is so pol­lut­ed and dan­ger­ous that girls who bathe there could lose their abil­i­ty to have chil­dren," stat­ed a fre­quent vis­i­tor to the beach. He showed up to take a swim, but was sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed by its con­di­tion. "I am head­ing back home, the on­ly rea­sons I come here is be­cause it is usu­al­ly clean and I don't have to go far, and I al­so don't have to go over any precipice to get a swim," he joked.

"This is the on­ly place peo­ple can swim and not get in­fec­tions," Rey­nald added. Just as he spoke a group of na­ture lovers from Bermu­da, garbed in their bathing at­tire, ap­proached. Like Rey­nald, they had tak­en an­oth­er route to get to the bay, as the ac­cess road was closed.

They had heard about Mac­queripe and de­cid­ed to vis­it. They were redi­rect­ed to an­oth­er beach as it was im­pos­si­ble to swim at the bay.