Page sponsored by Texaco Caribbean Limited
Publication: Daily Nation
Paper Section And Page: 15A
Paper Date: Wed, May 9, 2001
Byline: Compiled by Terry Ally
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Page sponsored by Texaco Caribbean Limited |
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Progress killing reefs
CORAL REEFS on the south and west coasts of Barbados are badly degraded - we know. The nearly completed South Coast and the upcoming West Coast sewerage projects promise to reduce the nutrients and contaminants entering our coastal water through groundwater seepage and domestic drains. But, are these the only causes of degradation? No, and they may not even be the main ones for some reef areas.
Two fringing reefs in the Holetown area, between Almond Beach Club and Chefette Restaurant, have deteriorated to an alarming degree in the past two years. This may be true of others nearby, but these are the two that I have observed by snorkelling, intermittently, between 1973 and 1986 and regularly since 1986 (reefs a and b in the diagram). What I have seen in the past few years is an obvious increase in the extent of coverage of the reef by algae, at the expense of other forms of life, including corals. The visual impact of this is a darker, browner reef with a decreased variety of organisms attached to or living on the bottom.
Dense growth
Most unusually, from about October 1999 through February 2000, there developed a dense growth of sea lettuce on both reefs. It formed beds with fronds up to six inches in length. When the rough seas common on the West Coast in the first quarter of the year came, this algae was broken off and lay in thick mats that covered much of the sandy areas between the reefs. Then it gradually decayed until it was gone by about November 2000. I had never seen this before on the West Coast, and to me it was a clear indication that there had been a major input of nutrients in the area.
These rather dramatic changes in the reef
environment coincide with a period in which an unusually high amount of sediment
was washed from upland areas of the West Coast down gullies and drains to the
coast and into the sea. The reason for this was an extensive golf course
development that required large areas of land to be stripped of vegetation
exposing the soil.
Living as I do in the Holetown area, I was able to observe the runoff on several
occasions. There were times when the water that ran down the Molyneux Gully,
Molyneux Road and the road past the St James Cemetery was thick with mud,
leaving drainage wells clogged and much of the coastal area under a layer of
mud.
The mud-laden water flowed into the sea through the four drains in the Holetown area at Almond Beach Club, Las Palmas, Baku Beach Club, and the Government complex. After these inflows, the sea was cloudy brown with sediments for days. Following that, the cloudiness decreased, but any movement close to substrate of the fringing reefs would raise a cloud of sediment, showing that it had settled out there. Even now, in my opinion, the reef substrate is covered with a thicker than usual layer of sediment.
I have no scientific measurements that can prove the relationship between the muddy runoff and the deterioration of the reefs, but it is well known that sediments degrade reefs. One could get into a long technical argument about what caused the deterioration. Was it the El Ni-o event in 1998 that started it by bleaching corals, or Sahara dust, or the fact that there was rain through the dry season in 2000 so that ground water seepage was continuous, or all of the above? But, the fact remains that there was a massive influx of sediments from the land between 1998 and 2000, and there should not have been. Why?
I am told that there was an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the golf course development, and that it included a sediment control plan. I have not been permitted to see the EIA despite several requests to Town Planning. Did it include an "erosion and sediment control plan"? Was it completed and provided to the developers before they began their work? We deserve to know the answers to these questions.
I know what was done regarding drainage works for the area, through information provided to the Holetown Watersheds Group, an informal citizens group concerned with flooding and environmental matters in the Holetown watersheds. In my view the extensive drainage works will result in a considerable improvement in drainage and reduction in coastal flooding, and the developers should be complimented on their efforts in this regard. However, these benefits will be realised when the development is completed, the surfaces revegetated, and the systems operating.
Problem
It is the construction period that has been the problem. Presumably the developers complied with the requirements of the EIA. Given the scale of exposure of the soil to erosion, it was obvious that there would be a high risk of sediment erosion into the sea. It happened. In a few years, the development will be done, the golf course will be pretty and green and the superficial ugliness will be forgotten. The reefs will still be dead.
Perhaps this is the price that Barbados is willing to pay for development, jobs and foreign exchange. If so, it is short-sighted. True the reefs are under the water and most of the people who will use and benefit from the development will never see them. But if these reefs are no longer able to do their job - protect the beaches, produce food, and provide a livelihood for dive and glass-bottom boat operators - others will feel the impact of their destruction.
The large-scale exposure of the land continues as the development presses to the south. Perhaps this time, the coming rains will send rivers of mud down the gullies south of Sandy Lane and by the Coach House onto the reefs there. Then, where next? Will we see poorly managed development steadily destroy all the West Coast reefs.
The knowledge and experience to avoid this is available and we must insist that developers use it. This is nothing new. "Guidelines for Sediment Control Practices in the Insular Caribbean" was published in 1994 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Caribbean Environmental Programme and is widely available. It is an excellent guide and provides numerous technical references on sediment control.