NEGRIL, Westmoreland — There is a brewing crisis developing in the resort town of Negril where it is costing some hoteliers hefty sums to clean up rotting seagrass dumped on their beaches last week during adverse weather.

As they try to hold onto guests who find it had to tolerate the stinky and unsightly mess, hoteliers also have to contend with summonses from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) which has cited them for using heavy-duty equipment on the beach without a permit.

Three hoteliers spoke with the
Jamaica Observer following a fiery Negril Chamber of Commerce meeting held at the Negril Tree House Resort on Tuesday.

Their stance is that the cold front that caused the problem was a natural disaster and that they had to act as no help had come from officials even five days after it occurred. They explained that they had merely attempted to help themselves and that they had carefully used backhoes to collect the organic waste deposited on the shores and bury it under the sand.

“I have 98 per cent occupancy. I have guests in house who are paying a lot of money but yet they can’t access the beach because it is stinky and smelly. So, I had to do it,” stated owner of the White Sands, Negril Hotel, Michael Russell.

“The Government is not willing to come down and clean it, yet when a hotel tries to clean it, then they tell the hotel to stop cleaning because we are somehow going to hurt the micro-organism in the sand. It is absolutely ludicrous,” he added.

“My guests were absolutely furious because they were so happy to see the beach being cleaned and I turned around and told them, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you any more’,” relayed Russell. “We had many checkouts from…upset people.”

Director at Charela Inn Hotel, Sophia Grizzle Roumel said her 59-room property has spent $1 million so far to have the beach cleaned up.

“Our major concern is the bad publicity that this can create because a lot of our guests are e-mailing us and are asking us if the beach is cleared yet. So, right now, we are not sure what the final cost is going to be because we have had a couple of cancellations. We are not sure if it is because of what happened or for other reasons but there are a lot of inquiries about the state of the beach at the moment,” she told the
Observer.

“We need to get it out there that we are cleaning and it should be OK soon. But, it would have been nice to have more assistance, especially from the Government, to even just clean the areas that are not in front of hotels. It would have made life much easier,” Grizzle Roumel added.

As they did at White Sands, Negril Hotel, NEPA enforcers showed up at her property with the police. She escaped a summons as equipment operators had by then ended work for the day.

“I think what really happened is, as usual, they sat in Kingston and made a decision about Negril without consulting anybody on the ground to understand the devastation that was taking place on the beach,” suggested the Charela Inn director.

Grizzle Roumel said both NEPA and Prime Minister Andrew Holness were misinformed as the organic waste on the ground is seagrass (a plant) and not sargassum (algae). She and other hoteliers are also puzzled by the apparent change in the Government’s stance on how the issue would be addressed.

During a visit to Negril last Saturday, the prime minister thanked hoteliers for starting the clean-up of their properties and assured them that the Government would play its part after about two days.

“We will do the clean-up and assist where we can with the private beaches if necessary; but definitely, clearly, we will have to clean up all public access beaches along this corridor,” Holness said then.

Managing director of Negril Tree House Resort, Gail Jackson Brooks said her property has, without help from the Government, spent half a million dollars to have the beach and her property cleaned up. After two days of intense work, she now has happy guests, she said.

“Any time there is a storm, I privately have to take care of my beach, period. There has never been one word of help,” stated Jackson Brooks.

In the meantime, the Negril Chamber, which said it has managed to get NEPA to reverse its stance and allow hoteliers to clean the seagrass from their property, now wants the agency to get the word out.

“We as a chamber spoke with Minister of Tourism [Edmund Bartlett], TPDCo [Tourism Product Development Company] and other people that are interested and they [NEPA] have now rescinded this. The minister of tourism, we thank him, has spoken to Mr [Peter] Knight of NEPA and they have now rescinded it,” said chamber President Elaine Allen Bradley.

“They have not put out any statement to anybody to tell them that they can go ahead. We who have spoken to the minister have actually been putting out statements but NEPA has not put out a statement to tell people. So, as far as we know now, it is hearsay even though the minister has said that it has been rescinded,” she added.