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Several Jamaican beaches face bans for cricket World Cup
By Andrea Downer, Freelance Writer
Kingston, 02 January 2007 (Panos) - Two of the most popular beaches in the corporate area – Hellshire and Lime Cay – may not be accessible to patrons of World Cup 2007 and other members of the public if they do not conform to the Public Health Regulations.
Hellshire Beach in St. Catherine, which is well known for festival, fry fish and lobster, is in breach of a number of Public Health regulations and according to the Ministry of Health these will have to be rectified before the staging of the region’s premier cricketing event in 2007.
“Hellshire does not currently have adequate bathroom facilities at the site and that beach also has site access issues,” said Leonard Smith, Environmental Engineer at the Ministry of Health.
According to Mr. Smith, while the beach is littered with several structures, which offer food and refreshments for sale to visitors, there are no proper bathroom facilities, which the public has ready access to and this poses a serious public health risk.
Thousands of persons from within and outside of Portmore visit the beach, particularly on week-ends and public holidays, and the beach is often the venue of a number of entertainment events such as stage shows and football matches.
Mr. Smith said that if proper bathroom facilities and proper access to the beach at Hellshire are not put in place, then bathing restriction notices will be posted at the beach.
He also explained that Lime Cay - a small island close to the old Buccaneer town of Port Royal - is also pushing to put in a number of hygiene and safety measures before World Cup 2007.
He however, noted that plans are in place to erect bathroom facilities at Lime Cay, and if the facilities are in place before March 2007, then the Ministry of Health would not place any restrictions on the public’s use of that beach.
World Cup 2007 will be held in a number of Caribbean countries including Jamaica from mid March next year until the end of April 2007.
Mr. Smith also said that the Ministry would be enforcing closure notice at a third beach, the Gunboat Beach in Harbour View in East Kingston, which has been officially closed since the 1980s. The beach was closed by the government due to high levels of pollution in the water. However, residents from Harbour View and its environs still swim and fish in the beach on a daily basis.
According to Mr. Smith, while the last few water samples taken at the Gunboat Beach in the past few years have shown that the pollution levels in the water has decreased, the Ministry of Health is not yet ready to give the beach a clean bill of health.
“There are still some water quality issues there,” Mr. Smith stressed.
He said there has to be at least ten consecutive sets of water samples, which indicate that the water is safe for recreational purposes before the health ministry can clear the bathing restriction at the Gunboat beach.
The Environment Unit of the Ministry of Health has the authority to order beaches that violate the Public Health risks closed.
“If the breaches are considered moderate, the ministry usually posts public notices on the beaches that are in breach,” he explained. “However, we can enforce closure, but that is a last resort.”
However Mayor of Portmore, George Lee expressed concern about the situation and said that he would try to expedite things so that the Ministry would not have to close the beach.
“We would be certainly unhappy if visitors come to Jamaica and cannot go to Hellshire,” he said while acknowledging that he was aware that things were not ideal at the Beach.
He explained that measures were being put in place to address issues like the bathroom facilities as Hellshire had recently gotten a grant from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica to do this.
“They should be in the process of putting the bathroom facilities in place,” he said.
According to the Mayor, he intends to check on the progress of that project and see how plans to erect bathroom facilities and pipe water to the beach can be expedited. He added that occupants of the beach were also experiencing a problem in getting approval from the Urban Development Corporation, UDC to put a sewage system in place.
Access to the Beach front however was another unresolved problem.
“There is not much that can be done about access right now. Some huts would have to be removed, but I don’t know that that would be possible in such a short time (before the Cricket World Cup),” he stated.
The Mayor said that he did not think that should be a major issue but that persons still had the option of using the neighbouring Fort Clarence Beach if they were uncomfortable with Hellshire.
Fort Clarence is however closed for rehabilitation and it is unclear whether it would be reopened in time for World Cup Cricket.
In the government’s preparation for Cricket World Cup 2007, the Environment Unit of the Ministry of Health recently did an assessment of the island’s most frequently used beaches.
“The Ministry of Health has a complete work plan for Cricket World Cup 2007. There is a component that deals with Recreational Water Quality Monitoring,” said Mr Smith. “The plan for Cricket World Cup will involve identifying key Recreational Water Monitoring sites between Trelawny and Kingston and increasing monitoring at these sites.”
He said the Jamaican government had secured funding of $1.5 million dollars for that aspect of the programme.
“Some sites include Milk River, Hellshire, all major public beaches in St. Ann such as Dunns River, the Burwood Beach in Trelawny,” he said. “The programme will be in effect for the duration of Cricket world Cup. We will be identifying sites that are known to be unsafe for bathing and will enforce bathing restriction at those sites,” Mr. Smith said, while explaining that any decision to close a beach would have to be assessed on the level of threat that public health department perceived that the beach posed.
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