Only hurting ourselves
DID you see it? I am not talking about Monday’s celestial event of the solar eclipse. No, I am talking about a-blink-and-you-would-have-missed-it moment last Friday.
In watching the coverage of Tropical Storm Harvey as it affected the island by our local television broadcasting company, I wanted to know how many persons caught what I did and what reaction, if any, they had to it.
As the news camera captured the water rushing along the streets and the several areas that were flooded, I managed to see one man standing at the doorway of an open shop, simply drop a plastic bottle into the water gushing by before heading back inside.
It is amazing to me how Barbadians seek to blame others for their own actions. The nonchalance with which many persons simply discard garbage onto the streets is absolutely appalling.
Persons have little regard to the impact dropping a cup, a bottle or a plastic bag can do to the environment as long as it is out of their hands and interestingly enough, these same persons would be complaining about flooded roads and blocked drains, never once considering that their actions have led to the problem.
This action tied into what the Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs said a few hours later as the flood waters abated, leaving many homeowners in parts of the north the not so envious task of cleaning up what had been waterlogged and mud covered at the peak of the rains.
He pointed to a runoff tunnel that had been blocked by a mattress and other paraphernalia, which obviously had contributed to a backing up of water and stressed that Barbadians must do better and stop the littering and dumping, which was obviously compounding the problem when there are heavy rains.
Citizens must stop the belief that ‘as long as it’s not in at me, I don’t have to care’, because at the end of the day, while it may not be their neighbourhood flooded because of that dumped old stove, bucket or even littered plastic bag blocking the drain, it may be their relatives’ or friend’s house flooded because of their inconsiderate actions.
Persons must also consider that what they litter also ends up affecting the fragile ecosystem of our beaches, as the flood waters dump many of these items in such areas. On my family’s weekly sojourns to the beach, I always find myself picking up plastic bags, forks, straws and styrofoam containers, but up to last week, I pulled a margarine container, a bleach bottle and even a sardine tin from out of the sand in my short walk from the water to the car! Imagine if a little child had been unfortunate enough to have sliced their foot on that half buried tin. We really must do better.
On another matter, I continue to find it disheartening that although we are told almost weekly of the fact that we are a water-scarce nation, there is nothing really being done to capture this precious resource when we have it in abundance like we had it last Friday and especially like the never before seen deluge of November 28 last year.
It is sad to think that all of those gallons of water were allowed to flow into the sea due to a lack of facilities to capture some of it for local use.
It is time that the Government and the private sector form a partnership for such a facility to become a reality for Barbados, so in times of drought like the early months of last year, the island would not be mere weeks away from water rationing.