Sweeping

The new administration has got to raise revenue and reduce costs. I figure they need all the help they can get. I make the following suggestions for increasing revenue starting with the most obvious and least controversial.

           'Sin taxes' always receive public approval and approbation. No one would object to increasing the duties on tobacco and alcohol. Anguillians consume far too much alcohol, anyway. It would be a significant health measure just to triple the duty on spirits, wines and beer. Tobacco is hardly a problem in Anguilla. Increased excise duty will make it even less so. And, don't forget lapdancing salons, cockpits, and dogfight rings. No more turning a blind eye to the main chance to maximise revenue!

           Collect property tax from the thousands of householders who have refused to pay it. Do not forget the fines associated with late payment. There is no need to prosecute everyone, an example of one or two prominent citizens should result in a flood of homeowners rushing to pay up. Perhaps, the Hon Mr Hubert Hughes can volunteer to be the guinea pig? That would be a real show of leadership.

           Disconnect the thousands of illegal water connections and prosecute the offenders for having stolen water. I do not approve of my tax dollars going to subsidise certain well-known North Valley and South Valley business men using the public water for free.

           Enforce the accommodation tax laws. Visitors to Anguilla pay the bed tax, and certain well-known local and foreign hotels have failed ever, and I mean ever, to pay the public revenue collected by them on behalf of the public into the Treasury. This is a form of licensed stealing, so long as Government continues to condone it.  If I were a law abiding hotelier, dutifully paying my bed tax into the Treasury every month, I would be particularly offended.

           And, please, don't tell me any stupidness about not wanting to “criminalise” poor Anguillians. These not-so-poor Anguillians have done it to themselves, no one is doing it to them.

           Remember, the new broom sweeps cleanest!

Corito

The Hole. Just south of the power station at Corito, there is a very large hole that was excavated when a million cubic yards of fill were needed for the airport extension project. The hole, known by the construction workers as "The Hole," used to contain a million cubic yards of fill, before it was a hole. If my numbers are correct, it is a million cubic yard hole.

Shortly before the 2005 election, there was speculation about The Hole and its effect on The Valley Aquifer. Government outsourced information about The Hole to opposition candidates and allowed misinformation, lies and stupidness to circulate freely for several months. Then, a spokesman for the United Front announced on the radio that the Party had an innovative solution for The Hole, but they were not free to talk about it until after the election. I don't make this stuff up; I heard it with my two ears.

That was three years ago. The Hole sits there pretty much unchanged except you can no longer see the water at the lowest point because it's been covered with garbage, including toxic waste such as old batteries and television sets, slowly leaching into the aquifer.

Is it time for a change in Anguilla, or is it only for the USA?

Only a few short months for Anguillians to make up their mind where they are going.

Reverse Osmosis

Water Corporation of Anguilla. I want to go back to a topic that concerns me. I wrote about it two weeks ago. The comments that were posted in response did not answer any of the issues.

We have no regulations controlling the disposal of waste in Anguilla. Waste is dumped all over the island. There is no limit on the type of waste that we can dump, or where we can dump it. Every kind of poisonous material is dumped all over the island, not only at the public landfill at Corito.

Much of our solid waste contains poisons that will eventually do us damage. Particularly vulnerable are foetuses and growing children. As this waste rusts and breaks down, the heavy metals in it leach into the ground and filter down to the water table. There, it accumulates until we suck it up in a well and sell it to the people.

The danger of drinking Anguilla's ground water was one of the main reasons we were told why the reverse osmosis plant at Crocus Bay was obliged to bring sea water from far out to sea. They treat sea water and used it to supply the island with safe, drinkable water. They are not allowed to treat the ground water, though this would be much cheaper than sea water.

The main pollutants that we should be concerned about are the heavy metals. Excessive levels of aluminium, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, nickel, phosphorous, thallium, and zinc, in our water supply, will eventually poison us. There are 23 heavy metals in all. These metals leach into the water from ordinary household waste that we dump.

Reverse osmosis does not remove these poisons from the ground water. Highly specialised machinery is required to remove these poisons from our ground water. We have no plan to purchase and run such equipment.

Reverse osmosis is a process that removes sodium chloride from water. That means it filters out the salt. It does not “clean up” anything else that may be in the ground water. Adding chlorine to water does not assist, except to kill the e-coli bacteria that seep into the water table from our septic tanks.

If you want to learn more for yourself about this problem, Google “heavy metal poisoning” or “cleaning heavy metals”.

Why in the world would we want to go back to trying to “treat” Anguilla's ground water? Because it is cheaper!! Cheaper for whom? And, for how long until the medical bills start piling up?

Any new reverse osmosis plant in Anguilla should be obliged to use sea water for the health and safety of children not yet born.

Silly Season

Silly Season. That's what the press calls the month when all the important people go away on holiday. There is no news to report. So, they report silly stories like, “Man bites dog.” It is now only June, but it is silly season in Anguilla. There is nothing worth reporting in the newspapers. Nothing on the radio.

No one has emailed me with any new stories about maladministration in the public service. Nothing about any of the projects being about to fail due to wasteful management. Nothing about the test results on Anguilla's water table.

Was I mistaken, or did I hear on radio a boast from the new water corporation that we are going to abandon the use of desalinized sea water? Desalinized well-water will be cheaper, I heard. We have been consuming desalinized sea water for the past couple of years. Some sixty-five percent (65%) of it is said to be wasted. Illegal hook-ups that we do nothing to prosecute is part of the problem. Leaking joints due to faulty plumbing causes the rest.

Instead, we are going to use the water in Anguilla's water table. I thought we abandoned that resource years ago due to the pollution. Going back to that source will somehow cure the leaking joints?

Hopefully, the leachate problem has been solved. Either that, or, ten years after the change-over, increasing numbers of babies can be expected to be born with three legs and no brain. That won't be silly at all.

Corito Dump

Corito Dump. Time to wind up this series of posts on Anguilla's water hazards with a look at the public garbage dump at Corito. It is cutely called Anguilla’s landfill. The word landfill suggests stuff you put into a hole in the ground in order to fill it up and level it out. What the word does not disclose is that in Anguilla we first dug out the hole. We now fill it in with garbage in order to dispose of the garbage. It is only landfill in a very general sense. The word is, in short, a euphemism for waste.

Everything gets buried in Anguilla’s landfill. There are no restrictions. There are no regulations, except what the security people make up on the spot. It is not even compulsory to bring anything to the landfill. There is no law or regulation against dumping all your garbage on your neighbour’s land. Unless, he finds out and sues you. That is the limit of the regulation in Anguilla.

I have never been to the Corito Dump. I would not know what to look for, or where to look. I know only from asking around that until a year ago, the hospital dumped its waste there. Body fluids and amputated limbs are now incinerated. It was not always so. If you see one of the dump dogs running around with a large bone in its mouth, don’t worry. No need to call the police. It is only Uncle Harry’s femur from his amputated leg.

Heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium accumulate over time in the bodies of mammals causing serious illnesses. They enter the human body as a contaminant in soil or as a pollutant in groundwater. These metals are some of the most extreme examples of hazardous waste. Lead and cadmium are used in batteries. We dump our batteries in the public dump in Anguilla. Other producers of hazardous waste include dry cleaners, automobile repair shops, exterminators, and photo processing centres. Hazardous waste includes septic tank sludge, fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, cathode ray tubes, paints and solvents, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, cell phones, computers, and a host of other household goods. In other parts of the world, hazardous waste is not permitted to be disposed of untreated in the public dump as if it were mere domestic waste. We in Anguilla deposit it all untreated in the public dump. Rain falls on it. Some of it dissolves over time in the ground water. It seeps into our aquifer. The Anguilla aquifer consists of a lens of lighter rain water floating on top of the saltier and heavier sea water that soaks into the island from the surrounding sea. The aquifer is where our wells tap into to draw out well water. Many of us drink the stuff. Particularly if we buy water from one of the water suppliers who flourish unregulated and untested around the island.

Can I have a beer, please!

I want to leave water now and touch on an education issue in the next post.

Water Corporation

Privatising Water. If the water situation is so hazardous, as we have been seeing in the previous posts, why does government not get rid of it and privatise it? This is a solution that has worked in the past for other such difficult and messy departments as electricity and health. Government might even make some money from water, for a change.

It turns out that just that solution was arrived at and agreed on several years ago. The United Front had it in their Political Manifesto during the general elections. Government has even committed to taking just that step. The European Union gave financial aid for improving and developing Anguilla’s water infrastructure. One of the conditions of the grant was that the water supply would be handed over to a corporation, so that it could be run on a more businesslike footing, once the project was completed. Government agreed to that condition and signed on the dotted line, promising to take that step. When they will get around to doing it is another matter. Your guess is as good as mine. Meanwhile, the project is long completed. Is no one from the European Union paying attention?

My information is that a Water Corporation Act was even drafted by the Attorney-General’s Chambers. It has, apparently, even been published in a Gazette for discussion. This was several years ago. Nothing has happened since. The latest story is that they are in the process of hiring a consultant to advise before the Bill is enacted. That must be the twentieth consultant on Anguilla’s water resources in the past thirty years. What is it they say? If government does not intend to proceed with a recommended and highly desirable measure, they give it to a consultant to study. We do not need to have another report to know that Anguilla’s present arrangements for supplying the public with potable water are a national disgrace and a scandal. It is only the complacency of the people, and our reluctance to put up with further regulation, permits government to get away with such willful neglect.

Can we have a little leadership in this place?

Hotel Water

Hotel Water. We have been considering the essentially unregulated state of Anguilla’s public water supply. We have looked at the fact that the water that is distributed by the Water Department is produced from sea water. As a result, it is unlikely to be polluted by Anguilla’s aquifer. The aquifer we believe is affected by heavy metals, toxic waste product of every kind, and toilet waste that leaches into it from various sources. The most important of these sources of polluted water is the Corito Dump. That is where old batteries, body parts, dead dogs, old refrigerators, oil waste, and garbage of every kind has been placed for many decades. Private water suppliers use water drawn from wells in the interior of the island. This water is likely to be affected by this toxic waste. Only testing the aquifer for toxic waste traces will prove otherwise. This private water and its source is not regularly tested. It is not subject to any kind of regulation or standards set by any water authority in Anguilla. The reason, we have seen, is that government has been reluctant to impose any regulation. Setting standards and regulation probably does not sit comfortably on Anguilla’s culture of being a frontier society.

What about the hotels, you ask? How do they get their water for their guests? They use a similar reverse osmosis to treat water they draw from wells. Their water is not regularly tested either. Are the guests in Anguilla’s hotels at the same risk as those of us private citizens who must occasionally purchase truck loads of water when our cisterns run dry? Enquiries reveal that the hotel guests are said to be safer than we are. Their water, like ours, is still not regulated by any state agency. There are no national water standards that private manufacturers must meet. However, hotel guests can afford to be more complacent than we, the general members of the public. The hotel wells are all close to the sea. Their water is not considered to be drawn from our aquifer. The experts consider it to be sea water. It has not been contaminated by all of our toilets and the Corito Dump.

Of course, that is just speculation. No one conducts regular tests to ensure that is true. No one has published test results for the chemical content of the sea water near to our hotels. So far as I have been able to determine, no one has ever tested for heavy metals and other poisonous chemical waste. Tests are apparently only conducted for e.coli and other bacterial pollutants.

If you know otherwise, please let us know. The tourists need total comfort and reassurance here!

Water Bills

Public Water. While I am on Anguilla’s public water supply, let me get one matter off my chest. That is the payment system for public water, or lack thereof. While I was gone from Anguilla between the years 1999 and 2004, working in neighbouring islands, I diligently paid my Anguillian water bill every month. Even when I was not there to use any water, I paid. I had been told that I had to pay for the meter rental. Whether or not I used any water, I had to pay the monthly minimum. I paid. I considered it my civic duty, indeed a legal obligation. It was only years later that I learned that the mains pipe from the water tank at Old Ta to North Hill village, into which I had a connection, had been abandoned several years previously. I had been paying for water that not only I had not been using, but that had ceased to flow in that mains pipe for several years before. I could not have used it even if I had turned on the tap! The Water Department was considerate enough to cancel my last bill and discontinue the billing.

It turns out that there is no legal obligation to pay for water in Anguilla. Most people who are fortunate enough to receive a supply of piped government water do not pay for it. Only suckers pay. That’s official. I have learned that a consultant’s report several years ago revealed that, even then, at least fifty percent of all the public water supplied in Anguilla was being stolen. I understand there was an effort to prosecute one or two of the biggest offenders, people who took government water and even resold it. Nothing came of the effort. The Attorney General’s Chambers advised the Water Department that no prosecution could succeed. The reason why? Apparently, the law of Anguilla still was that only the secretary of the St Kitts Water Board could prosecute. And, since there was no St Kitts Water Board, nor any secretary of it, in Anguilla, there was no one authorized to prosecute persons who stole Anguilla’s public water. The Water Department tried cutting off the water supply to offenders’ homes. The culprits simply got a plumber to hook up unofficial connections to tap into the public supply. Not one of these offenders, of whom I understand there are several hundred, was ever prosecuted.

So, why did government not just introduce a law in the House of Assembly and create a new Water Board to enforce Anguilla’s water laws? They were advised to do just that. I am told that a draft new law was even Gazetted for discussion several years ago. But, then our brilliant and far-thinking Ministers had second thoughts. They withdrew support for the proposed new law. The reason? They did not want to “criminalize” stealing of water. Why not? Because, it turns out, some of their biggest supporters were the major offenders. The reason why their excuse for inaction is stupid is that everyone knows that they could have announced an amnesty and given every one of the thieves a chance to get their connection recorded and legalized. It would only be the most deliberate and stubborn of offenders who would be “criminalized”.

Meanwhile, I have checked the law. What the Water Department was advised by the Attorney General’s Chambers is no longer true, if it ever was. The Watercourses and Waterworks Act does provide for an Anguilla Water Board. It consists of the Water Engineer and four other members to be appointed by ExCo. All that happened is that ExCo failed to appoint the four members. They seem to have deliberately not put in place the Water Board that the law provided for to enforce Anguilla’s water legislation. If this conjecture is true, it is evidence of absolute negligence on the part of ExCo!

Needless to say, I long ago stopped paying for government water. I rely on my cistern and the water I collect on my roof. I have to do so. There is no functioning water mains anywhere near my home. I still cannot get public water even though I want to pay for it.

This post was an aside. I want to continue considering some health hazards in the next few ones.

Water Testing

Anguilla’s Water Lab. We are looking at the alarming state of Anguilla’s unregulated water supply. The absence of a functioning Water Lab is only understandable when viewed in the context of Anguilla as a frontier society. A frontier society is usually one that is more informal, democratic, self-reliant and egalitarian. By definition, it is also a lawless one. To this day, we Anguillians are not amenable to regulation of any kind. There is no expectation that any internationally recognised standards apply to anything we do in Anguilla. The disposition of the average Anguillian and, increasingly, of everyone who has come to reside in Anguilla, is that Authority in Anguilla can safely be ignored. There is little or no national dialogue on what Anguilla’s future is to be. The print-media and radio call-in programmes oscillate between extremes of complacency and the occasional call for violence and death. The political directorate shows no stomach for planning or principle. Only the squeaky wheel is said to get some oil in Anguilla. There are no squeaks coming out of the Environmental Health Unit. Anguilla’s water supply system is a victim of this lack of vision, absence of planning, and putting aside of principle.

Anguilla has no functioning Water Lab. What that means is that Anguilla’s water supply is not regularly tested. Water lab technicians do, I am assured, take samples of the piped public water supply from time to time. These samples are sent off to a kind and cooperative laboratory in nearby St Maarten for testing. God knows what they test for. Such information is not public and is not accessible, at least to me. No one would dare to suggest that the private suppliers of water for domestic use should be regulated or even tested. When there is a specific complaint made by a member of the public, eg, of seeing lumps of feces in a pond near to a hotel, the Anguilla Water Lab personnel visit to take a sample. They get it tested in St Maarten. The results are not public. There are no consequences for failure to meet standards. The testing does not result in an improvement in the quality of the toilet waste disposal.

Enquiries reveal that none of the hotels in Anguilla has a properly functioning toilet treatment system. Effluent is pumped into nearby ponds, or out to sea, without regulation or even concern. No one in Anguilla remarks on it. Pump trucks clear any overflowing septic tanks, and dispose of the waste. Better not ask where they dump it. I could show you photographs. I could take you to some of the grounds where the waste is dumped near to where children play. There is no regulation on the statute books in Anguilla applying to this waste disposal activity. There is no licensing procedure for the pump trucks. The Environmental Health Unit personnel do not even know who engages in this activity. They have told me so. The Public Health department has no authority over these service providers. I would venture to suggest that, if anyone recommended that such a state of affairs was unacceptable in Anguilla, and should be corrected, there would be a public uproar. This, after all, is a frontier society. Anything goes. Freedom to the people!

Water Standards

Water Authority. In most West Indian countries, the quality of the water supplied to the public is monitored and regulated by a “Water Authority”. Such an Authority has charge of the distribution of the public water supply. It has powers given to it by a law. It can prosecute people who harm the public water supply. It can sue to collect the rates set for the supply of water. Anguilla has no Water Authority. The reason is historical, and not a mystery. Our Authority in the past was the Water Board of St Kitts. When we separated from St Kitts, we kept the water law. But, we never set up our own Water Board.

Anguilla never set up any kind of water authority or water board. We never gave any agency in Anguilla the authority to regulate the quality of the water sold to members of the public. We have a Water Department, but it has no statutory recognition. The reason is again historical. Most homes in Anguilla supplied their own water. After Anguilla began to develop in the 1970s, entrepreneurs began to supply water to homes whose cisterns had run dry. In the beginning, the suppliers begged, borrowed or stole it from the cisterns of homes that were unoccupied. No one complained; everyone was happy. Why regulate something that was working perfectly?

Except, the day came when there were not enough cisterns to supply the demand. Various companies began to import their own water making equipment. Some of them manufactured water and sold it to the public. Others, such as the hotels, manufactured water for their own use, and did not sell to the public. None of these water manufacturers and bottlers is regulated by any government agency. At present, we have no control over the quality of water we drink or bathe in. Anguilla is the Wild West when it comes to water. Why does this matter?

The Crocus Bay Water Treatment Facility produces drinkable water by a process of reverse osmosis from sea water. This sea water is pumped up to the plant from nearly half a mile out to sea. This is “pure” sea water. After treatment, this is the water that is distributed in pipes throughout Anguilla. As an exercise in self-discipline, the Facility ensures that its water contains two parts per million of chlorine when it reaches the end user. Compare that to the private manufacturers and sellers of water. These include Anguilla Water Suppliers Ltd of Water Swamp. They manufacture their water drawn from a well in the Farrington. This is the water that is sold and distributed by Island Transport Ltd and National Trucking. There is Charlie’s Quick Water Delivery Service of Long Road. They manufacture their water drawn from a well in Mount Fortune in East End. There is Vanterpool Water Delivery Services. They manufacture water drawn from a well at Welches. This water is all drawn from Anguilla’s aquifer, or water table. Anguilla’s water table is where all the used batteries, the toxic power station and gas station used oils, the septic tanks, and the cemeteries, drain into. None of this well-water is checked, except occasionally when there is a complaint. Even if a problem is discovered with this water, there is no one who is authorized by law to enforce standards. Not that there is any regulation governing water standards that can be enforced in Anguilla.

And, to think that this is the water that I purchase to put in my cistern to drink, and to cook with, and to wash!

The dysentery outbreak we had on the island last year might be just like a simple cold in comparison to what lurks around the corner!

Are you, look a wuk!

Water Hazard

Water Quality. Basic to a nation’s health is the quality of the water available to its public. When we drink a glass of water we expect that “the authorities” have ensured that it is safe to drink. I have received a number of emails recently that suggest that is not the case in Anguilla. I have gone around asking questions.

How do you know that Anguilla’s water is safe to drink? Because, it is tested at the Water Lab and the tests indicate that it is safe. But, Anguilla has no functioning water lab. We have not been able to test water in Anguilla for some years now. There is a building going up adjacent to the Environmental Health Unit near the NBA roundabout in The Valley. It is designed to be the new Water Lab, but it has not yet been handed over to government. I visited it yesterday, and there were two men working in it. At the rate that two unsupervised men usually proceed with construction, it will be many months if not years before it is ready to be commissioned.

We have a trained and qualified water technician at the EHU. She was not authorized to answer my questions about the quality of Anguilla’s water supply. So, I can only tell you what people who should know have been telling me. I hope you have a strong stomach for some of what I shall be passing on to you in the coming days. My concern is that if something is not done urgently about Anguilla’s present environmental hazards, the gastroenteritis outbreak that we experienced last year is going to be a joke in comparison to what we can expect.

It is not as if our Ministers of government are insensitive to the issues. Perhaps the loudest round of applause that greeted any of the Chief Minister’s announcements on the Park on Wednesday was for his promise that the Dolphinarium would not be permitted to be relocated to Sandy Ground. You must know that an area of the sea outside the old Mariners Hotel was to have been fenced off and turned into a dolphin cage. They would be fed there, and they would use the sea as their toilet. The Anguilla National Trust had written a well-researched and strongly worded plea against this installation. They had pointed out there had been no Environmental Impact Assessment. There had been no consultation with the residents of Sandy Ground. There had been no study of the impact on the animals of the oil, noise and traffic from the nearby cargo jetty. Unbelievably, the Planning Department had gone ahead and given planning permission. Not a soul in Sandy Ground had been consulted. No member of the swimming public knew that their beach was about to be turned into one big dolphin toilet. I have been the recipient of a surprisingly large number of astonished emails enquiring how our government could have allowed such a thing. Osborne and his ministers redeemed themselves in the eyes of many when they took this bold and correct decision to prohibit the relocation. They have some more steps they need to take in the same area of public health and welfare.