Will We Ever Get Serious?

28, Feb 2000
The old Colonial Government knew this and would never have allowed any further tampering with the Savannah, without proper environmental investigation Carnival and all its ingredient-shows have outgrown the Queen's Park Savannah, so what is the purpose of paving roads there when the aim and the focus should be to get to hell out of there?

The Savannah is not only the lungs of the city, it is more than that! The paving of it is bad enough since, from an ecological standpoint, the city needs such open spaces of sheer greenery. How come the Minister of Public Utilities has not told Carlos John and his gang, and the society as a whole, that Queen's Park Savannah produces some 3.5 million gallons of potable water, most of which supplies the Hilton Trinidad hotel and the General Hospital.

The water-table and underground aquifers of the Savannah are crucial to the city's water supply. One well, and there are many in the Savannah, produces as much as one million gallons of water a day. That is what Carlos and his goons are playing the fool with. Who can say that the paved areas will not affect negatively the recharge areas of these very underground aquifers and so cause our city's natural water supply to be significantly reduced? Why endanger our God-given gifts? The Horse Racing Authority had to be removed from the Savannah for the very said reason: that it could not add any structures in the area, nor put down a permanent track, because of deep concerns about the water-table.

The old Colonial Government knew this and would never have allowed any further tampering with the Savannah, without proper environmental investigation. Is it that government ministers today, for reasons best known to themselves, are now so enamoured of desalination plants that they are envisaging yet another one probably down on the peninsula to supply the city at the cost of some $120 million as the one being constructed in Point Lisas? If that is the case, then the conspiracy to pave parts of the Savannah takes on an even more diabolical viciousness.

On the other hand, we see certain big, private investors putting forth outlays of as much as $10 million to provide bottled water for drinking consumption, a fact that became known only because of the fiasco with contaminated bottled water recently. There is even a suggestion that, in the next ten years, almost 45 per cent of the demand for drinking water, particularly in the urban areas, will be supplied by bottled rather than pipe-borne water; won, processed and distributed by the Water and Sewerage Authority. Maybe, in time, we shall see Carlos and company setting up bottled-water plants.

Maybe it's time that someone points out to the populace here that T&T produces probably the best and most potable water in the entire Latin American region. That, in fact, has been so for quite some time. And our natural underground sources in the Queen's Park Savannah and in Tacarigua have much to do with this.

At Tacarigua, the bore-holes in the savannah have been known to produce the purest water in the country. Very little processing has to be done with it, before distribution to the people of the Corridor. WASA will surely object, as did the CWDA before it, to any infrastructural development in that area that will affect such a pristine water supply.

Already the hills of the Northern Range around Tacarigua, which WASA officials insist are the main source from which water runs off and settles in the table and aquifers beneath the Tacarigua Savannah, are being bulldozed to make way for the forever expanding housing demand in the east and the chief organisation is Home Construction, a subsidiary of Clico, again associates of the famous Carlos.

We support the call for an Environment Court immediately, and for the empowering of the EMA to bring litigation against and jail, if needs be all those buffoons who so easily play havoc with the welfare of future generations and the sustainability of our natural course of development.

And why must they drag Kitchener and Sparrow into this? Who ask them? As the Guardian editorial of two Saturdays ago established, Carnival and all its ingredient-shows have outgrown the Queen's Park Savannah, so what is the purpose of paving roads there when the aim and the focus should be to get to hell out of there? There has to be a special place designed for the Carnival arts with a huge revolving stage, of course, so that steelbands can make ready on one-half of the stage, while another plays for the audience. Then, the stage turns. That alone will cut down the timespan for Panorama by 50 per cent. At any such future place, the Kitchener/Sparrow Boulevard will find its true and genuine home. At the paved Savannah, it is nothing but a gimmick to pacify the rage of the masses and allow the buffoons to play themselves for another day. But the masses are not stupid. They shall indicate what they want in time.

At the Panorama on Wednesday night, we were discussing the political situation with a number of pannists and pan-followers, and it was interesting to hear them pontificate on the reasons for the visit of Prince Charles to T&T and the region at this point. It was clear to them that the British High Commission had organised the visit to allow the Prince's presence to act positively on behalf of British capital in the context of the new BP Amoco gas agreement with T&T and the now heating-up round of talks geared to open up the telecommunications industry, in light of the new demands of information technology (IT) that will most certainly break the stranglehold of British Cable & Wireless on the entire region. The Prince, indeed, did not fool panmen about the purpose of his visit. Yuh think Carlos could fool anybody?