Andrea Downer, Sunday Gleaner Writer

A view of the entrance to Hellshire Beach where the fisherfolk have been allowed to remain.- Photo by Leighton Williams

Visitors to the country during the staging of Cricket World Cup 2007 who want to bask in the luxury of beautiful beaches will have to travel to other parishes for this experience as health authorities clamp down on nearby ones that pose a public health risk.

The white sand and sun may be irresistible, the fish and festival may beckon but the authorities have concerns about the sanitary facilities that these beaches currently offer and are determined to close them if by the time World Cup 2007 begins in March, the situation is not improved.

Hellshire Beach in St. Catherine, with its inadequate bathroom facilities and Lime Cay, a small island nestled next to Port Royal with similar problems, could be affected. But Gunboat Beach in Harbour View, east Kingston, which has been officially closed since the 1980s, will definitely remain closed.

The beach was closed by the Government due to high levels of pollution in the water. However, residents from Harbour View and its environs still swim and fish in the beach on a daily basis.

Leonard Smith, environmental engineer at the Ministry of Health, said that while the last few water samples taken at the Gunboat Beach in the past few years have shown that the pollution levels in the water have decreased, the Ministry of Health is not yet ready to give the beach a clean bill of health.

"There are still some water quality issues there," Mr. Smith stressed.

He said there has to be at least 10 consecutive sets of water samples, which indicate that the water is safe for recreational purposes before the health ministry can clear the bathing restriction at the Gunboat beach.

At Hellshire which is famous for its fish, festival and fine bodies, Mr. Smith said, "Hellshire does not currently have adequate bathroom facilities at the site and that beach also has site access issues."

We Can Enforce Closure'

The Environment Unit of the Ministry of Health has the authority to order beaches that violate the Public Health Regulations closed. "If the breaches are considered moderate, the ministry usually posts public notices on the beaches that are in breach," he explained. "However, we can enforce closure, but that is a last resort."

However, Mayor of Portmore, George Lee has expressed concern about the situation and said that he would try to expedite things so that the Ministry would not have to close the beach in his jurisdiction.

"We would be certainly unhappy if visitors come to Jamaica and cannot go to Hellshire," he said while acknowledging that he was aware that things were not ideal at the beach.

He explained that measures were being put in place to address issues like the bathroom facilities as Hellshire had recently received a grant from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica to do this. "They should be in the process of putting the bathroom facilities in place," he said.

According to the Mayor, he intends to check on the progress of that project and see how plans to erect bathroom facilities and pipe water to the beach can be expedited. He added that occupants of the beach were also experiencing a problem in getting approval from the Urban Development Corpora-tion (UDC) to put a sewage system in place.

Access to the beach front was another unresolved problem.

short time span

"There is not much that can be done about access right now. Some huts would have to be removed, but I don't know that that would be possible in such a short time (before the Cricket World Cup)," he stated.

The Mayor said that he did not think that should be a major issue but that persons still had the option of using the neighbouring Fort Clarence Beach if they were uncomfortable with Hellshire. Fort Clarence recently has been reopened and is being operated by the UDC.

In the government's preparation for Cricket World Cup 2007, the Environment Unit of the Ministry of Health recently did an assessment of the island's most frequently used beaches.

"The Ministry of Health has a complete work plan for Cricket World Cup 2007. There is a component that deals with Recreational Water Quality Monitoring," said Mr Smith. "The plan for Cricket World Cup will involve identifying key recreational water monitoring sites between Trelawny and Kingston and increasing monitoring at these sites."

He said the Jamaican government had secured funding of $1.5 million dollars for that aspect of the programme. "Some sites include Milk River, Hellshire, all major public beaches in St. Ann such as Dunns River, the Burwood Beach in Trelawny," he said. "The programme will be in effect for the duration of Cricket world Cup. We will be identifying sites that are known to be unsafe for bathing and will enforce bathing restriction at those sites," Mr. Smith said, while explaining that any decision to close a beach would have to be assessed on the level of threat that public health department perceived that the beach posed.