Kyle De Li­ma

Warn­ing: not read­ing may short­en life ex­pectan­cy. Ear­li­er this year, while work­ing on a rou­tine job in an am­mo­nia man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, I was shocked to learn the full ex­tent of the eco­log­i­cal de­struc­tion tak­ing place dai­ly. Be­fore I con­tin­ue, I must make it clear that it is not my in­ten­tion to shut down any busi­ness or make op­er­at­ing here in T&T so dif­fi­cult that we lose a valu­able as­set of our na­tion­al econ­o­my. I am hop­ing to give the pow­ers that be a gen­tle tap on the shoul­der to make them aware that we are learn­ing, and want them to clean up their op­er­a­tions.?These com­pa­nies use large quan­ti­ties of high­ly tox­ic chem­i­cals in many of their process­es. I be­came aware of one in par­tic­u­lar be­cause I was ex­posed to it and be­gan to make some en­quiries in­to its ef­fects and le­gal­i­ty. An am­mo­nia com­pa­ny that I've worked for, (and per­haps oth­ers, but I don't know), us­es a chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tured by "GE Betz" (a US wa­ter treat­ment com­pa­ny)?called Clamtrol in T&T, and Spec­trus ct1300 in the US. It is a bio­cide used to keep the cool­ing sys­tem of the plant free of bar­na­cles and mol­luscs, which re­duce the ef­fi­cien­cy of the sys­tem.

Af­ter a lit­tle nos­ing around on the net, I dis­cov­ered that it is be­ing used far too of­ten and no one can say at what con­cen­tra­tions. Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­men­ta­tion pro­vid­ed by var­i­ous sources on the In­ter­net, the max­i­mum num­ber of times per year the prod­uct should be used is five. I was told by the com­pa­ny that they use it every Thurs­day, that's 52 times a year! Plipde­co is the gov­ern­ment agency that man­ages the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. They have stopped the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) from con­duct­ing any test­ing and mon­i­tor­ing of the sur­round­ing coast­line and wa­ter­ways. That task they have de­cid­ed to leave up to the com­pa­nies re­spon­si­ble for the dis­charges. Be­cause these test re­sults are con­duct­ed on be­half of a pri­vate firm, the re­sults are not avail­able to the pub­lic. Even if they were, could we be sure of their ac­cu­ra­cy? Per­haps it's just me, but this sounds like mad­ness. Nei­ther the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency nor the Pes­ti­cides and Tox­ic Chem­i­cal Con­trol Unit has any record of this prod­uct even be­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Fol­low­ing re­peat­ed at­tempts by the au­thor, they have still not at­tempt­ed to bring the com­pa­ny in­to com­pli­ance. I be­came aware of a new al­ter­na­tive to Clamtrol present­ly in use in the US which is en­dorsed by the US En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and the De­part­ment of Fish­eries. When I brought this prod­uct to the at­ten­tion, of the am­mo­nia com­pa­ny, they told me un­less the Gov­ern­ment banned Clamtrol they had no in­ten­tion of switch­ing. The rea­son might be the dol­lar val­ue of the con­tract with GE Betz's dis­trib­u­tor. An EMA of­fi­cial told me that spe­cif­ic chem­i­cals such as Clamtrol are not test­ed for un­less their use is re­port­ed ei­ther by the com­pa­ny us­ing it or by some­one like me bring­ing it to their at­ten­tion. I won­der just how many un­re­port­ed sub­stances are present­ly be­ing used. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards pub­lish­es our ef­flu­ent dis­charge stan­dards, but they are not manda­to­ry. Even if they were, no one is mon­i­tor­ing. Ba­si­cal­ly it's a free for all in T&T present­ly, which the com­pa­nies un­der PLIPDE­CO are tak­ing full ad­van­tage of. It's time for us to rope them in and hold them ac­count­able. They must be made to be­come com­pli­ant and pay for fix­ing the dam­ages caused. For more, see "Tri­ni Eco War­riors" on face­book.com.

More In­fo

Fish and oth­er sea food caught in the Gulf of Paria have been found de­formed and with can­cer­ous le­sions and tu­mours. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists ob­served a decade back that the food from these wa­ters is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with heavy met­als and hy­dro­car­bons. Peo­ple have writ­ten to us as we con­tin­ue our mul­ti­me­dia se­ries "Clean­ing Up The Mess" with claims that en­tire com­mu­ni­ties ex­posed to the pol­lu­tion from the es­tate may be af­fect­ed with can­cer. The Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate is home to 95 ten­ants, com­pris­ing a mix of methanol, am­mo­nia and urea plants, three steel plants, a pow­er plant, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice com­pa­nies. The shock­ing truth is the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al es­tate is al­most en­tire­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed and large­ly op­er­ates with­out air, wa­ter pol­lu­tion and haz­ardous waste rules pol­lut­ing the wa­ter and air near­by.

Much of the in­dus­try is de­pen­dent on nat­ur­al gas. As a mat­ter of ur­gency the Gov­ern­ment needs to arm the EMA, the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs and the Bu­reau of Stan­dards with teeth to mea­sure, mon­i­tor and hold the of­fend­ing in­dus­tries ac­count­able. This week's guest colum­nist on Clean­ing up the Mess is Kyle B De Li­ma, a cer­ti­fied div­er who has worked for in­dus­tries on the Es­tate and has come up with some first hand in­for­ma­tion.

This Sun­day on Clean­ing up the Mess, on CNC3 at 10.30 am and 6 pm get the full scoop on the pol­lu­tion from the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al es­tate as Ira Math­ur in­ter­views Kyle De Li­ma. Send in your pho­tos and com­ments to cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt?and join our face­book page on?http://www.face­book.com/cleaningupthemess?ref=ts