Dr. Karl Watson of Barbados National Trust “SHOCKED” by Sandals environmental damage

“In the short and medium run, tourism is really the only engine for our continued prosperity and economic growth. So, we welcome the Sandals development, however, I must say that having come down here this morning, I am a bit taken aback and shocked.

(snip)

Quite a number of mature trees have been felled and then I also see development on the way in the sea where a type of breakwater is being constructed, and I wonder whether the environmental impact assessment that aught to have been done for this project was really based soundly and on correct assessment, and whether the long term effects of both this type of deforestation, denuding of forest cover, exposure of the sandy layer, topsoil etc, or the creation of an artificial offshore reef; whether the future results of these developments have been thoroughly assessed.”

 

Barbados In 2025: More Cars, More Roads – Or Light Rail Transit, Fewer Private Vehicles?

For all the money wasted by our glorious leaders in the past ten years, we could have had a light-rail solution half way around the island. Instead, we’ve had ten years of more roads, more buses, more cars every morning – all heading to the city. Most of the private vehicles have only the driver.

This article was as true as the day it was written almost six years ago, probably more true…

Barbados Free Press

Our Current Failed Vision Of Barbados Transportation, Society and Daily Life

If you think our roads are crowded now, if you think that your time spent getting to and from work or school is unreasonable, if you think our quality of life and environment in Barbados is heading for the suckwell – just close your eyes and picture how Barbados will look after another ten or fifteen years of continuing to implement the same transportation “solution” of more cars, more roads, wider roads and ever more cars.

Is that where you want to see Barbados in the year 2025?

Unless we get some vision and leadership around this place, that is exactly where Barbados is headed.

View original post 675 more words

Barbados Government’s unrealistic taxes & inability to pay tax refunds is causing dumping, ruining the environment and our tourism economy

“Clearly the commercial banks will not extend interest free overdrafts to companies like ours to allow for Government’s inability to meet their obligations, so the financial challenges are further compounded as time goes by.”

“Many businesses have been forced to wait more than two years for submitted VAT refunds without any interest being paid.”

Indiscriminate garbage dumping linked to unrealistic tax structure

Adrian Loveridge – tourism expert, hotel owner

While at first this week’s column may seem to stray from the subject ‘matter’ and purpose, the consequence of certain actions has a direct negative effect on our tourism performance.

As a business we get absolutely no ‘free’ state collection of garbage.

We sort and separate everything we can with the wonderful assistance of B’s Recycling and virtually everything else we pay private contractors to collect and dispose of at a considerable cost.

Therefore when the Municipal Solid Waste Tax was imposed, almost without warning, the additional (in our case) $8,000 a year in further unbudgeted taxation was especially irksome as we have been asked to pay for something we do not in any way benefit from directly.

Compounding this already unfair situation is the announced tipping fee which the waste disposal companies will be forced to pass on to their customers like us.

This at a time when we are among many businesses who have been forced to wait more than two years for submitted VAT refunds without any interest being paid.

Clearly the commercial banks will not extend interest free overdrafts to companies like ours to allow for Government’s inability to meet their obligations, so the financial challenges are further compounded as time goes by.

From a tourism perspective, I also really also wonder if our policymakers have truly thought this through. While you cannot condemn any Government for indiscriminate dumping, clearly there has been a marked increase in this unfortunate practice, especially in some of our outstanding natural beauty spots.  Does anyone think for a single second that our visitors do not notice these blights on our amazing landscape? 

Bajan Lions & 4-H Club volunteers clean beach. That’s EXACTLY what this rock needs!

There might be hope yet!

by passin thru

Talk, talk, talk is mostly all you get ’bout this place. I’ve been guilty of it too. “Why doesn’t somebody do something about (fill in problem here)?”

Part of the problem is an attitude of “Guvment do it”, and truth be known Bajans have been told for generations that government is a solution to everything. Didn’t bother to have insurance for that house of yours that burned down? No problem – guvment repair it. Woman has four children by seven different men and can’t find a place to live? No problem – guvment find you a place.

That kind of thing nurtures an expectation of cradle to grave service and problem solving by the government, but we’ve run out of money, and in truth sometimes guvment isn’t much good for anything practical.

Now look here in the Advocate and there’s some children cleaning up Silver Sands Beach – for Bajans and for the tourists. Lions Club prey on unsightly seaweed, issue rally cry

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Thank you to Ranica Worrell, Akera Walcott, Denico Trotman and Bryan Haynes!

Could we do this every three months country wide?

Think about that. Our beaches could once again be the best in the world.

Leaders, please step forward. I’ll give four mornings a year on a national clean-up.

How about you?

(Thanks to the Barbados Advocate for the picture.)

Time for the Barbados Revegetation and Restoration Act

by Born B’badian

Bajans used to have big mouths, and gossip would spread faster than lightning.  It worked to help keep people straight, cause nobody wanted to be known as a crook or a thief. But reputations dont matter anymore in Bim. Furthermore, Bajans so busy buying and building bigass houses they can’t afford to furnish properly, and bussing their behinds to pay for, that they do not pay attention to what is going on in the country.

Bajans were never victims like I see now. They were always quick to open they mouth and cuss you out or land somebody a blow longside their head for doing them wrong. But now, the process has changed where people putting well known fall down drunks to run the country and crooked lawyers to handle the money matters of the country. The old people who sweat in the canefields to make Barbados a good place to live must be ready to jump out the grave with a fresh tamarind rod to beat everybody behind.

The people in Bim who still living sweet, are the ones who fix their little house good, and still have money in their pocket. They still planting a little kitchen garden and some fruit trees, instead of wasting precious land with front lawn. It is a sin to be importing vegetables and fruit, even seasonings from other islands while only grass growing on a big patch of land, taking up water, and keeping the place hotter than the devil’s hell.

Bajan’s got to stop letting foreigners buy their land, its the only thing we really own. People can’t go to Singapore and do this. Errol Barrow, God rest his soul, tried to base Barbados off of Singapore, but the current corrupt in power let toutmebackIlah samcouche and the duppy, get citizenship, buy land and do whatever they want on the island. Of course, bajan’s vote them in like loyal beggars blinded by cornbeef politics.  Ain’t no community spirit anymore, cause everybody lockup in their big house hiding that they eating saltfish and breadfruit and can’t pay the bills, or thiefing and whoring to pay them bills.

Bridgetown Careenage and Harbour beautiful… but deadly to Sea Turtles

Honey Bea III refuses to answer accusation of fishing for turtles

Contributed by BFP reader CJB

The Careenage and Harbour used to be a garbage strewn muddy dump. They have spent years cleaning it up and landscaping the surrounds. They have even restored the lift bridge to working order. However now that the area has been cleaned up and the water is far less murky (polluted?) turtles have started to appear, largely attracted by the free food from the deep-sea fishing boats moored there.

Unfortunately some of the deep-sea fishing vessels are now also trying to catch the turtles with rod, line and hook. The boat we saw was Honey Bee III. (Editor’s note: I think he means Honey Bea III)

They had a rope over the side with what looked like the entrails of a large fish at the end of it – two Hawksbill turtles were attempting to get bits off it. One was an adult, another a juvenile. However there was another conventional fishing rod and line with hook also dangling in the water. It was baited with fish – quite why it was there is a moot point. It was this that the adult turtle got caught on – obviously attracted to the bait on the hook. There was quite a struggle by one of the guys to ‘land’ it and the rod bent right down. Eventually the turtle surfaced and its head broke the water – my photo in hi-res clearly shows the line from the rod to the hook in its beak.

Then the line snapped and the turtles (both) swam off. The two staff carried on gutting a barracuda as though nothing had happened. The whole incident also witnessed by a number of tourists. 

Daughters of the Niger Delta “The oil has spoiled everything for us…”

BFP has been invited to see this documentary on Saturday March 8th. We’ll let you know what we think. Here is a description from the film’s website:

Daughters of the Niger Delta
Documentary (55:30 min)

Daughters of the Niger Delta is an intimate film portrait of three everyday heroines who manage to make ends meet against all odds. As their personal stories unfold, we come to see that the widely ignored environmental pollution in their backyard is not the only human rights issue affecting their lives.

The Stories

The film radically differs from the usual media reports about oil outputs, conflict, and kidnapping. It gives a taste of everyday life in the Niger Delta through the eyes of three ordinary women: Hannah, Naomi & Rebecca. Their struggle to survive in the delta’s beautiful but pollution-marred wetlands confronts us with the human impact of corporate irresponsibility, gender injustice, and failing government service delivery.

The stories of Hannah, Naomi, and Rebecca are sobering as well as uplifting. They shed light on day-to-day injustices that we rarely hear about in the news. But they also highlight women’s strength and resilience. Despite the hardship affecting their lives, the filmed women are determined to give their children a better future. Women may be the best captains to navigate the Niger Delta out of its troubled waters – if only they were given the chance.

Women’s Voices

It’s time to listen to women’s voices. Their priorities are relevant not only for the Niger Delta, but also for other parts of Nigeria that currently are marred by violence and social unrest. Women’s experiences can enrich the policy discourse – if only we are willing to listen.

Film website: Daughters of the Niger Delta

Bajan Dreamers heading for the Antarctic! (with a little help from their friends)

Bajan 17 year-olds Mickell Als and Shanice Holder have a dream: visit the Antarctic in 2015 while working to protect the environment.

Both have already been hard at work for years with various environmental and community projects on the rock – and now that they have been selected to be team members on the International Antarctic Expedition (IAE) 2015, all they need is a little help along the way. Cash, that is.

World Electronics in the Bridge Street Mall signed on as their first corporate sponsor, but Mickell and Shanice know it’s going to take more work to raise their mission profile and convince fellow Bajans that theirs is a worthwhile project. We at BFP are convinced that the project will benefit the environment, Barbados and the two young people so we’re on board to help them as we can.

BFP pledges to do regular stories about their project and progress and we’ll also publish some articles from their BajanDreamers blog. And yes, we’ll also do what we can to publicize their other sponsors like World Electronics (who are selling the new BlackBerrys Q10 & Z10 unlocked, for the lowest price we could find.)

Good luck to these two fine young people and… Keep working hard at your goal!

Barbadians should shake and fold!

The popular adoption of small ideas can lead to big changes. Here’s one from the TED Talks.

Free market and science drive Apes Hill Club’s choice of grass

Barbados Free Press has been kicking ’bout hey for over seven years and that is a long time in the blog world to post every day and build credibility with the search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Readership goes up and down with the news stories and when a big event happens we receive tens of thousands of visitors a day. Our best day ever was 44,087 visitors and just last week we did alright when some discussion about Harlequin was flying and 33,669 visitors stopped by.

Those numbers aren’t much compared with the big blogs that drive that kind of traffic and better every day, but we still do 3 million visitors a year at BFP and that’s not bad for a little nothing blog run by a bunch of drunks and the occasional unemployed aircraft riveter. (Anybody want to buy the world’s best set of bucking bars and dimplers – give me a shout! And when I say “the world’s best set” I mean it. It includes some wildly customized bucking bars and cutters that you didn’t even know you needed until you use them. I shoulda patented them a long time ago but it’s too late now.)

Some press release agents think Barbados Free Press is a real newspaper. Huh?

Some people mistake us for a real newspaper (or maybe they don’t) and we receive a couple of dozen press releases a week about anything and everything. Most are boring product announcements but today we see one about a type of grass that does exceptionally well in the Barbados and similar climes. I never considered it before but the press release has me thinking about how a good drought-resistant grass could save big money for a golf course over a few years. Water is scarce and expensive in Bim, so the choice of grass for any type of space should be a carefully considered decision.

Apes Hill Club Nursery is the licensed producer of this Zoysia sod in Barbados. That probably means it’s expensive… but how much water will you save over the years by using this type?

Robert

BARBADOS — Bladerunner Farms, the world’s largest privately owned zoysiagrass research and development facility, is proud to announce that Apes Hill Club Nursery, a licensed producer of JaMur Zoysia on the Caribbean Island of Barbados, now has this environmentally friendly turfgrass available for harvest.

The wholesale Apes Hill Club Nursery grows 15-acres of JaMur Zoysia for harvest as sod, along with some 50,000 plants, that are sold to commercial landscapers, land developers and homeowners on the island of Barbados. Ed Paskins, CGCS, is the golf course superintendent at the neighboring Apes Hill Club golf club and was instrumental in developing the Apes Hill Club Nursery.

Before planting the sod farm at Apes Hill Club Nursery, Paskins visited the Poteet, Texas, research facility of Bladerunner Farms to see JaMur Zoysiagrass in a real-world situation. That visit helped him decide to license JaMur Zoysia for use in Barbados.

“You need to know that you’re getting quality and that the person is going to stand beside it. I think that because Bladerunner Farms is a family business and the owner, David Doguet, was willing to put his reputation on the line for the grass was extremely important,” Paskins said.

…continue reading this article at WorldGolf

Electricity from ordinary sewage waste: Microbial Fuel Factory Cells

Barbados should give MFC’s a look!

by Robert D. Lucas, Ph.D.
Food biotechnologist.

Recently there has been much talk about the diverse means available of obtaining energy from renewable sources (solar, wave, wind as-well-as bio-diesel/gas). However, no mention has been made locally of the use of microbial fuel/factory cells (MFC’s). MFC’s are devices that convert chemical energy into electrical energy as do batteries, via the use of micro-organisms.

Unlike batteries, MFC’s can sustain their output of electricity as long as the chemical input is maintained. Most bacteria are electrochemically inactive and cannot be used in MFC’s. Those bacteria which are capable of producing an electric current are called exoelectrogens. Exoelectrogens, when placed into a suitable medium, transfer electrons (negatively charged particles) to an electrode which has been inserted into the medium. This flow of electrons is facilitated by an active electron transport system, which carries electrons directly from the microbe’s respiratory system to the anode ((negatively charged electrode).

“MFC’s do not depend on sunlight to be able to function. There is no need to have storage facilities for storing electricity as is the case with solar energy.”

Chunk of glacier becomes an iceberg the size of Manhattan

Thanks to an old friend for this interesting short. Aside from the astounding and beautiful photography and the scale of the ice ‘calved’ from the ice fields, I did not know that the ice fields have retreated more in the last 10 years than in the last 100 years.

Those who say that human activities don’t alter the earth’s climate are living in some sort of reality warp. Any pilot who has flown into New York City on a winter’s day will tell you about micro-climate: about how the heat, thermal mass and exhaust from this great city causes local climate changes including temperature inversions and dangerous wind shears, local icing, and restricted visibility – depending upon the prevailing winds and other factors.

If that’s what we can do on a purely local basis, imagine what humans do around the globe! When they burn the fields in Brazil, it’s Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) for hours when there is no real need of it. It’s the same in the Philippines – only there crop burning usually makes big and violent rainstorms. You can see them forming over the smoke if you’re sober!  🙂

Have a look at this short for the visuals and for the message. Visit the website too: Chasing Ice

Robert

One video Elizabeth Thompson won’t be showing at the Earth Summit in Brazil

Browne’s Beach: effluent meets the water as it has for a decade and more…

As we’ve said in the past, Liz Thompson did little except talk when she was Environment Minister. Her environmental legacy includes not bothering to introduce an Environmental Protection Act, letting corporate polluters like Shell Oil run wild in Barbados, building a garbage dump on shifting soil in a National Park, killing the last mangrove forest and telling environmental activists to shut up if you are white.

The video above is courtesy of Barbados Today, and shows beautiful Browne’s Beach where the effluent from five canals (and all those suck wells along the canals – that’s ‘septic tanks’ to outsiders) joins together and flows onto the beautiful tourist beach and into the sea.

How about a sea bath at Browne’s Beach? Anyone?

Further Reading

Elizabeth Thompson a big shot at upcoming Rio Environmental Conference.

Should you turn off the lights for Earth Hour? An environmentalist talks about his doubts.

Well-intentioned people produced some of history’s worst environmental disasters

by Nevermind Kurt

Hundreds of millions of people around the world will be switching off the lights at 8:30pm tonight (March 31st) and we will too. It’s time again for ‘Earth Hour’ – the largest environmental event in history. Last year over 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries participated, and that included a home near Grape Hall, Barbados where yours truly and a few friends sat outside in the dark and sipped cold Banks beer from the electrically-powered refrigerator still humming away in the house.

Luckily the petroleum-based paraffin wax candle burning on the kitchen table didn’t set fire to anything. To be truthful, we never thought about how the smoke from the candle impacted the ozone layer. We saw the candle as a symbol that we were doing our bit for the world.

We felt good about our little Earth Hour party. We were doing something important to help the environment. It was good for the environment, wasn’t it? It did help forward the environmental movement around the globe… didn’t it?

This year though we’re going to do something a little different: we’re going to talk about whether Earth Hour does any harm to the environment or to the environmental movement, and if so, what lessons can be learned and what should be done about it.

I can already hear the angry shouts from fellow environmentalists “How could Earth Hour possibly harm the environment? How could it harm the environmental movement?”

Calm down, friends. Unless you’ve thought about my questions before, why do you think you immediately know the answers? Why do you react so defensively when someone dares to deconstruct what you believe or asks you to verify that which you hold as environmental truth?

When science and common sense yield to shouted dogma

Shouldn’t we constantly question ourselves, our peers and the environmental elites and leadership? Why the defensive, dare I say almost religious indignation when someone dares to question the environmental dogma of the day? Where does this precious environmental dogma originate… from the environmental gods and saints? Is it therefore never to be challenged?

The environmental experts, gods and saints haven’t done so well lately. They have been wrong on more than a few occasions. Like all human beings they are sometimes wrong as individuals and not infrequently they act like a herd of lemmings headed for the proverbial cliff.

LED Lighting: Cost effective? We’re going to try it…

Jim Reid of Caribbean LED Lighting Inc. says that LED lamps can save up to 80% on electricity, are safe, environmentally friendly and don’t spread mercury and all those other nasty chemicals like the florescent bulbs do when they break.

Okay, Jim… we’ll give your product a try and report back to our readers in a few months.

Caribbean LED Lighting Inc.

Caribbean LED Lighting Inc (CLL) was born out of a passion for all things environmental, reducing our carbon footprint and helping our Customers do the same. That is why we focused on LED lighting.

Headquartered in Barbados and with distribution locations in Grand Cayman, Jamaica , St Kitts and Grenada we manufacture, assemble, distribute and sell LED lighting across the Caribbean and Central America’s.

Phone: 246-621-0092

e-mail: sales@caribbeanledlighting.com

www.caribbeanledlighting.com

Barbados: No rules about chemical use, storage, dumping

This week’s chemical disaster could have been prevented

This week’s spill disaster again reminds us that when it comes to environmental standards, laws and performance, our leaders have made us a third world country.

Sermac Laundry on Baxters Road burned over the weekend. That is expected: businesses and homes burn regularly. That’s why we have a fire service.

The problem with Sermac was that the building was full of drums of new and used chemicals – just waiting to make a routine fire into a neighbourhood-threatening disaster. With no laws the owners did what they wanted for years and now it’s our problem. Street closures, schools and businesses closed, ground water contaminated.

“[W]hat happens is that a number of laundries that use that chemical, since they don’t have an avenue for disposal, they store it on their premises …”

Roy Ward, head of RGW Consultants Inc, who was responsible for the clean-up at Sermac Laundry this week after the fire that destroyed the small business over the weekend. Source: Barbados Today (and thanks for the photo!)

For 21 years the BLP and DLP promised to put an Environmental Act in place. They lied and Barbados suffered. When Shell Oil had their massive pipeline spill of jet fuel and contaminated wells all along the pristine southern coast, there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done because there was no law against it.

When Fibrepol dumped gallons of acetone into the water table, there was no law against it.

When factories keep hundreds of rusty drums full of poison in a field with no fences and where children play, there’s nothing to be done because there is no law against it.

And when a dry cleaning company like Sermac stockpiles thousands of liters of poison in a residential area, there’s still no law against it.

To all our Environment Ministers, past and present, we give a hearty “Thanks for nothing.”

Reduced bus service targets working poor

When you drive a BMW SUV, you don’t give a damn about bus service for working folks!

“Recently some bus routes were downgraded to a 2 hour schedule. That is fine during off peak hours, but how about every 30 minutes during rush hours? That will certainly help the poor working class and those who depend on the service.

Just an idea for the smart people at scheduling.”

contributed by BFP reader “M”

Time to limit cars & road construction.

Invest in public transit that works

When the bus schedule changes were announced, the government SAID that service would be maintained more frequently “where needed”. That didn’t last long, did it? What the government doesn’t seem to get is that the service has to be there, frequent and RELIABLE before greater numbers of passengers will trust the service enough to rely upon it for work.

We agree 100% with our reader “M”, but we’ll take that much further…

It is time to limit the number of 4 wheeled vehicles per household as Bermuda did years ago. It is time to stop building new roads and to start investing in public transit that works. Two hour bus service is a joke.

You want to empower ordinary working people? You want to give them more money in their pockets? Make personal autos a luxury and not a necessity as they are now.

You want to ease traffic congestion? Don’t build more roads for more cars. Instead, make it easy and affordable to own a scooter or small displacement motorcycle. Take the duty off motorcycles under 150cc and off electric motorcycles and bicycles.

We cannot keep going the way we’re going with the only “solution” being more personal autos on more and wider roads. This madness must stop!

Greg Cozier sidesteps Vaucluse Raceway lawbreaking

NO PERMIT WAS ISSUED but Crozier and his friends said “Piss on the law, we’ll build anyway.” and that is exactly what they did.

Damage Control over Bizzy Williams telling the truth!

Dear Barbados Free Press,

You haven’t written about Greg Cozier’s reply to your Bizzy Williams’ “piss on the law” story. Did you miss it in Barbados Today?

“Anyone reading … [timeline of events regarding Vaucluse Raceway] would immediately see that, on one hand, branches of the Government of Barbados supported the creation of Vaucluse Raceway while, on the other hand, other branches of Government opposed it,”

Greg Crozier quoted in Barbados Today Blame Gov’t for conflict

Mr. Cozier is one of the principals behind the Vaucluse Raceway and it looks to me like he tried to do some damage control after Bizzy Williams pointed out that Crozier and his friends broke the law by building the racetrack. (Bizzy also admitted that he didn’t obey the law either when he built Bushy Park track.)

Cry “Government Red Tape” for public sympathy

Barbados Today says “Greg Cozier clears air regarding bureaucratic red tape with Vaucluse” but there’s no “air clearing” that I can see. Mr. Crozier attempts to justify his lawbreaking by blaming “government red tape”. He ducks and weaves all around the truth: When he and his partners couldn’t get their own way, like Bizzy Williams they said “Piss on the law” and just went ahead anyway.

It is true that some government departments (like Industry) supported Vaucluse, but it is also true that many more in government oppose the raceway including the local MP. After a study the Ministry of the Environment was dead against it and refused to issue permits and the Ministry go ahead. Agriculture is against it.

Thousands of people in the area and on the access routes are dead against the project because we put up with HELL whenever there is an event at Vaucluse Raceway: noise, garbage, traffic congestion, drunks and bad behaviour and that is when the crowds head in before the racing starts!

At night the sound of the engines carries so far and it is LOUD. We have one of the highest population densities in the world and we don’t need more noise.

Most at the Barbados Tourism Authority are luke warm to Vaucluse at best because they recognize that we have so much willy-nilly development on the island that we are in danger of losing the beauty and feel of Barbados. This is more willy-nilly development because there was no plan at any stage. Vaucluse started as a dirt track with no approvals or permits. Crozier and his friends just did what they wanted to do and to HELL with the rest of the community especially the nearby residents.

Don’t be fooled by the Barbados Today interview and article. Crozier will either get away with breaking the law, or he won’t. Whatever happens to him will be an example to everyone else.

The “red tape” that Crozier is talking about are LAWS that he and his friends didn’t comply with. The “red tape” is our government saying “NO” based upon the rules and standards we have in Barbados.

NO PERMIT WAS ISSUED but Crozier and his friends said “Piss on the law, we’ll build anyway.” and that is exactly what they did.

submitted anonymously