St. Maarten Private Eye

I have seen the construction trash on the beach in the large red bin.
Westin/Colombia Sussex has to be more responsible with their constrcution debris.
Trash should not be stored on the beach so close to the sea, espeically with heavy rainfall and heavy winds, the possibilty exsists that the debris will end up in the ocean.
Observer 1602 makes a point of reference to Easter Monday when locals and residents picnic on the beach and leave their beach party mess behind, which is bad enough, but this should be no excuse for a large company such as Westin to do what they are doing.
The beach front construction mess on Dawn beach looks awful and there is absolutely no reason to leave construction mess on the beach side.
I also do not agree with an embedded road on the beach sand, with heavy equipment driving back and forth.
As for that man made water retention tank that they replaced the natural pond with, can never replace the natural pond with filtering out the nutrients.
A natural pond works best as a filter with holding the water, nutrients sink to the bottom and overflow clean water flows over to the sand into the sea.
Ofcourse with large excavated areas, more sediment run-off will occur, reason why it is important not to build on hilltops and as much vegatation should remain in the hills.
What we need is a total reef survay made of all surrounding coral reefs, to check on their state of health.
For those of you that do not understand the importance of coral reefs, it is not about snorkelling and diving and fishing, it is more importantly a source of our beaches repleneshing itself.
A dead reef will not produce sand, look at the sand over a Divi and Belair beach.
The white sand on Great Bay was pumped up, dredged from the Great Bay Harbour.
Another item that has my concern is the massive sediment run-off that has been seen in the Great Bay Sea for the past rainy days, this has become common as the Philipsburg and surounding areas is built up and runoff comes from as far as St.Peters and the surrounding hills.
However, My point of concern is if hotels are advising against swimming in the waters when the sediment is so heavy.
Hotels located in Philipsburg should seriously consider taking pre-cautionery measures for their guests.
The Health department should also be playing a greater role in this issue as water testing should be conducted on a regular basis, same as what the Blue Flag certification suggests.
Water testing of the Great Bay sea can only be seen as beneficial to the tourism industry as it will ensure we take better care of what goes into the ocean.
Trying to hide the issue and not touch this issue as it might "harm" the tourism industy is bull in my opinion.
We had a major diesel oil spill caused by a sinking tugboat in the Great Bay and GIS is trying to calm fears that everyhting is under control and no reason for panick etc.
The island has no oil spill contingency plan, we have no tools for cleaning oil spills.
The island depends on the cleanup tools that SHELL/SOL can provide (at a fee?).
In this case, the owner of the tug boat Jason is known, but how many times have we seen that oil spill sources are unknown?
It is high time, we conduct regular water testing of the Geat Bay waters and we invest in a oil spill emergency contingency plan with cleanup tools.

Jadira Veen