By Gerald Miller, Freelance writerWESTERN BUREAU:
COUNCILLOR OF the Peters-field Division, Bernard Vanriel, is calling on the National Water Commission (NWC) to fence the Blue Hole facility and ensure that proper security system is in place at Roaring River. The councillor said there are allegations that people are disposing of human excreta inside the Blue Hole, which he told The Gleaner could lead to an outbreak of typhoid fever, which the parish is endemic to. Roaring River is the major source of water for the parish.
The community of Roaring River, which is adjacent to Petersfield in the parish, is located in his division. At a recent sitting of the Westmoreland Parish Council, Vanriel said that security at the source at Roaring River is paramount and every effort must be made to secure it. "The source of the water needs to be protected. It is a serious matter and the parish will pay for it dearly," warned Vanriel. Vanriel is not the only person who has serious concerns about the safety of the water at the Roaring River and possible threat of an outbreak of waterborne disease in the parish.
In a recent interview Dr Karl Blythe, Member of Parliament for Central Westmoreland and in whose constituency Roaring River is situated, said the people whose houses are posing threat to the source would have to be relocated. "The matter of relocating those who live at environmentally unsafe areas around the source is not a matter of if, but when it has to be done," Blythe said. While no serious discussion is presently taking place about relocating the residents despite the fact that land has been earmarked for the relocation of the residents, Vanriel is not allowing the matter to go away and has repeated his call on a number of occasions.
The need for the relocating of the residents has been ignored despite a survey carried out by the Westmoreland Health Department some time ago showing that 39.6 per cent of the 80 sealed latrines built in the 1990s for residents in the area, when there was a typhoid outbreak in the parish, have reached their capacities. In addition, 60.4 per cent of the pits, although not filled, contained effluence and water that normally fluctuate with the water tables.
E G Hunter, president of the NWC, has also been expressing concerns about the people living so close to the source. "The problem with Roaring River, however, is that there is tremendous squatting in the area in the vicinity of the river itself, and in the watershed that support it. And one of the big challenges that we face at this time, is how do we protect Roaring River water source and how do we manage the eventual relocation of the people in the area because that will have to be done," Hunter said a year ago.
