ST SIMON’S, Hanover

Picturesque Lucea, the capital of Jamaica’s smallest parish, is literally drowning in garbage despite the best efforts of its municipal leaders to instill better environmental practices in its population.

“At the moment we have a very serious problem of litter from the hills coming down to the harbour and then washing back onto the shore,” said Nerris Hawthorne, chairperson of the Hanover Parish Development Committee (PDC). “We are below sea level here at Lucea, so everything that comes from the hills gets washed onto the shoreline and into the drains and it is a very unsightly thing,” she added.

Consequently, the PDC, fearing that the garbage will undermine the tourism prospects in the small coastal town, which hopes to benefit from the development of a 1,960-room Fiesta hotel, located at nearby Point, have thrown their weight behind a $500,000 anti-litter campaign.

The campaign is being piloted by the PDC in association with Claudia Gardner, a final-year Social Marketing student at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and a recent recipient of the Grace Trailblazer award for community service. Conducted under the theme: ‘Reduce, Re-use, Recycle’, the effort will expose students of St Simon’s Primary School, as well as residents of surrounding communities to:

. methods of proper solid waste disposal;

. effective waste management; and

. environmental conservation.

St Simon’s was chosen because of its location in the hills – just three miles outside the parish capital – and will benefit in several ways from involvement in the campaign. The institution, with its student population of 73, is to be provided with garbage receptacles and its environmental club will be revamped to create greater awareness. Classrooms will also be repainted, and the school grounds beautified. A tree planting component is, in the interim, also to form part of the initiative.

Hawthorne noted that while Lucea may appear clean on some days, it was a façade. The garbage, she said, was concealed in the drains and would be washed out to sea only to reappear and create problems when it rains or when the tide changes.

“We had a very big shower of rain the other day. And if you had come and looked into the gutter before the rain, you would marvel at what came down that gutter and exited towards the sea,” she said. “The rain just pushed it all out there (and) it will soon come back when the tide is changing.”

The Venture gutter, she said, has proven particularly problematic. Located behind the Cleveland Stanhope market, Hawthorne said it is usually clogged with garbage from the hills. She has pinned the PDC’s hope for a clean Lucea on the environmental campaign.

“If we can help the young people and they, in turn, can help their parents to learn that litter from the hills impact on our shores (and) learn the proper methods of disposal from now, then we can look forward to a much cleaner town and a much healthier town,” said Hawthorne.

Town mayor Vasca Brown believes Lucea’s garbage problem has more to do with the baits of people within the town, adding that it is mainly eroded soil that washes down from the hills.

“I think the garbage is more contributed from persons within the town. I could be wrong, but that is my belief,” he said. “What you have is erosion of the hillside, and we need to train the rivers. We need to train the gutters.”

Against this background, he said that what was required was a public awareness programme designed around the town’s people. In addition, he said garbage bins – for which the parish council had lobbied through the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), without success – needed to be put at strategic points across the town to help prevent people from littering.