Illegal quarrying plague

Strategic police action on October 9 claims to have ended a major million-dollar illegal quarrying operation in Manuel Congo in Guanapo.

CoP Allister Guevarro was there on July 2, shutting down quarrying operations following reporting by Sunday Newsday on the activity after slurry was found in the Guanapo River.

The quarry operator, clearly disdainful of the intervention of the police, or confident that he was in the clear, boldly resumed quarrying until the Multi-Agency Task Force returned last week, arresting 19, including the owner of the operation.

On October 11, the operator and 17 employees were charged with the offence of processing of minerals without a licence.

For three months, acres of state land continued to be cleared, conveyor belts, steel rock-crushing equipment, guard posts, and a fully air-conditioned concrete building were installed to oversee the operation.

The police investigation will not only seize the equipment used at the illegal quarry, but it will also investigate the real estate portfolio of its owner, allegedly bought with the earnings of this crime. The material stripped and mined from state lands is a robbery for profit that took not just aggregate and sand, it also destroyed a pristine forest and endangered the wildlife that inhabited the area.

A legal quarry operating under applicable licences is allowed to mine designated land for raw material and must pay royalties to the state and deposit a bond to be used for rehabilitation of the site after the quarrying licence expires. Quarry operators deposit a performance bond against payment of royalties and rehabilitation agreements, according to the terms of the licence.

The actual rehabilitation of quarries since 2000 has fallen to small organisations such as the Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management project of the Caribbean Small Island Developing States in the absence of any institutional effort at strategic remediation on a national scale.

It can take between seven and ten years for a quarry site to begin to return to its previous state. Some never do.

Avoiding responsibility for remediating sites and the financial requirement to pay royalties while earning good returns on quarried material is clearly an attractive option for operators with experience in the construction industry. Once a business goes down that road, bribery, intimidation, and violence are apparently minor costs compared to decades of free access to prime state lands that lie under the shared purview of the Energy Ministry, Environmental Management Authority and the Forestry Division.

Guevarro's decisive action on this expansive Manual Congo operation is a hopeful indication that TT is ready to guard its patrimony and prosecute quarry operators who operate in brazen contempt of the law.

Until the opportunity cost of illegal quarrying matches or exceeds the costs of operating legally, this crime will continue to destroy state lands.

The CoP's policing action must be followed up with legal rigour to ensure that an example is set in the courts.