dredging in SVG
Tom van't Hof
tomvanthof at hotmail.com
Tue Feb 20 09:13:31 EST 2001
Dear Kurt,
It is very sad to hear that the battle has practically been lost. I
have followed your reports on Union Island, although somewhat
superficially, and I don't know why I did not realize earlier that
there is one thing that still needs to be done anyhow. If the
dredging and the construction of the pier are going ahead, the
impacts need to be documented so that similar mistakes can be avoided
in the future. That will also require establishing a pre-dredging
baseline. So there is no time to be lost.
Suddenly the whole story reminded me of Bonaire, where I worked in
the early eighties. A Venezuelan company was blasting and dredging a
system of canals in the limestone terrace to create waterfront
homesites. The canals were then going to be connected to the open sea
with anticipated disastrous results for the neighboring reefs. We
were unable to stop the development (too much politics - you know all
of that), but we did monitor what happened when the dredging for the
connection began. And we had the baseline data. We established
permanent photoquadrats and placed sediment traps at three
downcurrent locations from the dredging site and a control upstream.
The evidence was overwhelming and the reef was overwhelmed with silt
(sedimentation went up 1,700 times and all the deep Agaricia died
within weeks). A silt curtain was put in place after most of the
damage had been done. Do we ever learn?
The monitoring is simple and can be done by laypersons. The analysis
requires some expertise. I cannot commit anyone's time here, but why
don't you transmit a "CRY FOR HELP" to do the monitoring. The
Anguilla National Trust did exactly that when Beal Aerospace tried to
destroy Sombrero and we made a difference there, so why not try it
again?
Never ever give up,
Tom
*****************************************************************************************
Tom van't Hof
Marine & Coastal Resource Management Consulting
The Bottom, Saba
Netherlands Antilles
Tel. (599) 416-3348
Fax (599) 416-3299
e-mail <<mailto:tomvanthof at hotmail.com>tomvanthof at hotmail.com>
"Specializing in marine protected areas since 1979."
Resume, references and project history at
<<http://www.irf.org/hof.htm>http://www.irf.org/hof.htm>
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