Work on infrastructure that will prevent crocodiles from being stuck in barren sewage ponds at Greater Portmore, St Catherine is to begin on Monday.

“The infrastructure will be pretty much stair cases with surfaces that the crocodies can navigate,” Matthew Samuda, the Government minister with responsibility for the environment, told the Jamaica Observer on Saturday evening after a visit to the ponds where 10 crocodiles died from dehydration.

“For the larger crocodiles we’ll use pallets placed together at particular points around the entire pond. For the smaller ones it’s thin mesh wire that they will be able to climb,” Samuda explained.

Earlier, in a video release after the visit, Samuda said the infrastructure will “allow for escape routes for the animals should they re-enter” the ponds which are operated by the National Water Commission (NWC).

Samuda said that the NWC had taken three ponds out of operation.

Six of the crocodiles were found dead in the dry ponds on April 22, the day Jamaica joined the world in observing Earth Day. The remainder were found last Thursday when Hope Zoo General Curator Joey Brown and environmental officers returned to the ponds to do a thorough check.

Of the 10 crocodiles eight were adults — one of them pregnant — and two juveniles.

On Thursday, Brown told the Observer that the animals probably died over a couple weeks.

“They were not only starving, they had no water. They were really dehydrated… because all the crocs were emaciated and, like, kind of malnourished, but it would have been the dehydration that would have killed them because there was just no water whatsoever… You could tell [because] they were all found around the edges of the ponds, and you can see their scratch marks and their claw marks where they were trying to climb out,” Brown explained.

“It would have been brutal… very agonising, and it wouldn’t have been anything instant,” he said.

Samuda, who described the deaths of the animals as heartbreaking, also said new monitoring mechanisms are being implemented in partnership with the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and with curator Brown “to ensure that if animals are ever stuck again in these areas we are able to have them removed very quickly”.

Additionally, he said the NWC is to present a new maintenance plan for the ponds to the country and specifically to the residents of Portmore “because there have been a number of issues over the last year and a half, both with the east and western ponds and it’s obvious that the maintenance has not kept pace with the needs of the facility”.

“As it relates to NEPA, I’ve instructed that they do a full, comprehensive, and thorough investigation of all the circumstances that led to the deaths of these animals and they will proceed unencumbered. We will make the results of this investigation public, we’ll be completely transparent and we’ll let the chips fall where they may,” Samuda said.

“I just want to make it abundantly clear that the Government will not stand in the way of NEPA doing what the NRCA (Natural Resources and Conservation Authority) Act allows, meaning post any investigation, whether this one or any one, if there is negligence found, if there are breaches of the NRCA or Wildlife Protection Act, NEPA is clear and free the enforce as the law allows. And if that enforcement ends in prosecution, then no one is above same,” he said.

Under the Wildlife Protection Act anyone found guilty of capturing or killing crocodiles is liable to a fine of up to $100,000 or 12 months imprisonment.