ENVIRONMENTAL experts, and people who have an interest in the state of Kingston Harbour, will participate in a seminar today to review ideas on how to clean-up the harbour and for the financing of the project.

Today’s seminar at the Chemistry Lecture Theatre at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), is one in a series organised by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and is part of its effort to breathe life in a 1998 plan to rehabilitate the harbour.

“We want to go forward with the action plan,” said Cowell Lyn, a consultant on the project. “There has been ongoing action on aspects of the plan but we want to strengthen the implementation aspect of it. That is why we are having these series of seminars on the rehabilitation of the harbour.”

Kingston Harbour is the world’s seventh largest natural harbour, but it has been dead for decades, the result of effluents and other stifling material which each year enter the harbour.

For instance, it is estimated that 20 million gallons of untreated sewage enter the harbour daily, plus about 1.5 million tonnes of sediment a year. Chemicals and other substances from farming and industry also reach the harbour from run-off via rivers and gullies.

A recent 15-month study by the UWI, for instance, pointed to high levels of heavy metals like lead, arsenic and mercury in the fish found in the harbour.

Increasing levels of pesticides were also found in the harbour’s water and fish — posing a potential health hazard for birds and humans, who consume the fish. Other main pollutants of the harbour are industrial ship-generated waste and solid waste.

“We want to get the discussion going again on these issues,” NEPA’s Lyn stressed. “So we will have a panel of scientists and engineers, with specialist expertise in the pertinent subject areas, who will identify and discuss critical engineering issues involved in some of the proposals we have gotten for the rehabilitation of the harbour so far.”

The 1998 plans had put the cost of cleaning the harbour at US$212 million and said it would take 15 years.