CEDAR VALLEY, St Thomas – The Moy Hall coffee factory in Cedar Valley has suffered significant damage in the wake of Hurricane Dennis, estimated at $70 million to $80 million.

“At the factory, a number of buildings have been washed away, store houses flooded, the main office is covered in sand and silt,” said O’Neil Blake, manager of the Blue Mountain Coffee Cooperative.

“We have lost stock.”

Additionally, he said, the drying areas and the pulping house have been flooded with water flowing from the mountains.

“A number of machines will have to undergo extensive repairs to ensure that they can be used again,” he said.

Blake also noted that the Cedar Valley main road leading to the coffee factory has been completely demolished and was now a “river bed.”

Executive members of the cooperative are looking at the possibility of relocating certain activities of the factory to Morant Bay by next week. “Right now, there is no office. There is no formal contact with the organisation, so we are trying to get an office set up very quickly to ensure that we can remain a solid business structure,” said the co-op manager.

Several coffee farms in Cedar Valley, Penlyne Castle, Mt Vernon, Somerset, and other surrounding areas, whose owners were preparing for the 2005 crop before the July 7-8 gale, have suffered “severe fruit fall” and land slippage.

But, some of the damage could have been minimised if there was proper watershed management in the Blue Mountains, said Blake.

“Today, on a regular basis, you have persons cutting roads in the mountains. You have many bushfires and there is a total disregard and disrespect for preserving the environment,” he said.

Unsustainable coffee farming practices have been blamed for much of the environmental fall-out.

The co-op manager said his biggest challenge at the moment was how to transport the undamaged coffee to market.

“We are trying to make some arrangements to see how swiftly we could get out those stocks,” he said.