Unsightly boat graveyard

FEW THINGS show more graphically the gaps in this country’s environmental regulation than the unsightly and unseemly boat graveyard that has become the Gulf of Paria.

For decades, wrecks and abandoned vessels have been left to accumulate, as if gathered in some kind of ghostly afterlife.

They have contaminated surrounding areas, contributed to the demise of fishing practices, made ship navigation more difficult and defaced the coastline. And this is what we can see: some vessels, decades-old and falling apart, are buried in the seabed.

So much for eco-tourism.

Fresh oil spills, traced this week to these hulks by the environmental advocacy group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, have returned long-standing concerns about this marine dumping ground to the fore, just as the country on June 5 observed World Environment Day.

“We came and we boarded about 40 different vessels,” said the group’s corporate secretary Gary Aboud on June 4, one week after reports of oil in the waters off Chaguaramas emerged.

Mr Aboud took the media to a site at Point Gourde, where about a dozen boats, including tugs, fishing vessels and old yachts, serve as ugly relics of our country’s pollution problem.

“We have studies that show there’s major contamination of hydrocarbons in our fish,” he said. “Criminal elements are taking shortcuts.”

The problem goes back as far as the 1980s, when the Shipping Act was passed and when it was the practice to dump wrecks at locations like Chacachacare Island. But that legislation has not been amended in decades and officials have long complained about a lack of legal powers.

At the same time, the costs involved in removal operations, not to mention the risk of lawsuits, have served as disincentives for authorities to act.

In 2014, transport minister Stephen Cadiz announced $20 million had been set aside to clear the gulf of some debris.

But by 2018, the problem persisted, with the Coast Guard having to dispatch resources to deal with vessel spills and other environmental advocates issuing dire warnings about more spills to come.

No one heeded those warnings.

Today, state environmental matters are scattered across different ministries.

Policy, preparation and management are under the Ministry of Planning, as are the Chaguaramas Development Authority, the Environmental Management Authority and the Institute of Marine Affairs.

Nestled, however, under the Office of the Attorney General is the Environmental Commission.

The National Marine Maintenance Services Company, a wholly-owned state enterprise, is under the Ministry of Works, while marine fisheries are under the Ministry of Agriculture.

At a time of heightened national security concerns about the coast, the state needs to find a way to consolidate its efforts and to tackle this problem more effectively. These eyesores are not just nuisances. They are barriers to progress and health hazards.