… Negril revisited

In 2009, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga noticed that the famous Negril Beach had been seriously eroded, and suggested that the Negril Chamber of Commerce should “bring it to the attention of Government in such a manner that they can't refuse".  Two years later, it seems they’ve got the message.

We were pleased to see in a recent Gleaner that the outdated and inadequate Negril wastewater treatment system is to be upgraded.  The European Union, which financed the original plant in the 1990s, will supply most of the funds for modernizing the existing facility and fixing some of its technical and structural problems. The upgrade comes after years of complaint from local residents and businesses.

The treatment plant started to have problems soon after it was finished in 1999, and the results have included serious damage to the area’s beaches, pollution of the rivers and disappearance of the Great Morass, a wetland that once covered 2,000 hectares.

It isn’t news that Negril Beach – and others – are disappearing.  The reasons are not a mystery, even to Government.  Once the fish are gone and the reef is dead, the beach goes next.

A beach is a complicated system with a lot of moving parts, and over time a healthy one maintains itself pretty well.  A self-maintaining beach starts at sea, with healthy coral reefs.  The reefs slow the incoming tides and break the waves, so they hit the beach with less force.  They also slow the waves and tides going out, so the sand taken from the beach is dropped near shore.

Parrotfish – lots of them – are vital to the coral reefs and help build the beaches.  A mature parrotfish produces about a ton of new sand each year; a school of ten could fill a dump truck.

A healthy beach also needs seagrass beds and plants on land.  Their roots hold the shoreline and the sea floor together, slow the runoff from heavy rains and trap dirt and sand.  This helps the water to clear, holds sand near the beach and keeps silt from smothering the coral.

In Negril, too much development with too little planning and no control drew thousands of people into an area that could comfortably support hundreds.  Shoreline plants and seagrass beds were chopped down and ripped up.  Even when it was new, the sewage plant was too small and didn’t provide proper treatment.  It overflowed regularly, pouring muck into the river and the sea.

Any parrotfish that hadn’t been speared or trapped moved to a better neighbourhood.  The coral reefs were poisoned by sewage or smothered by algae and silt.  Soon the beach started to wash away.  Still, as recently as 2007 a NEPA representative was blaming the whole mess on Hurricane Michelle.

Now, Negril has a Great Wall – an expensive artificial reef of more than 100 slotted concrete pyramids sitting in the water.  These have helped to hold some sand on the beach, but the giant swimming pool they create is no substitute for a dynamic living system.  The repaired sewage plant may leak less but is still far too small for the load it should carry.  The troubles of Negril make a valuable object lesson for other shoreline communities: Protect what you have, because you can’t replace it when it’s gone.