To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?As of now there has been no sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment, even if pre­lim­i­nary, of the sunken earth at Todd's Road in Ca­paro, so there is a mea­sure of mys­tery about this phe­nom­e­non, even if there are ed­u­cat­ed guess­es about why the land slipped.

In the cir­cum­stances, there­fore, there should be put in place se­vere re­stric­tions of move­ment of peo­ple in and around the site as it seems to have be­come a nat­ur­al cu­rios­i­ty for peo­ple both from the area and even those who trav­el long dis­tances to see this phe­nom­e­non. The point is that in the ab­sence of a thor­ough un­der­stand­ing of what caused it and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it slip­ping even fur­ther, there should be cau­tion. But hav­ing made the point, the ob­serv­able ev­i­dence is that the slide is the re­sult of years, per­haps decades, of un­reg­u­lat­ed sand min­ing in the area. Dur­ing the tenure of the last gov­ern­ment, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing took hold in sev­er­al ar­eas. It came to be that both long-stand­ing quar­ry op­er­a­tors and those who seemed to have sprung up overnight to cap­ture a claim, grabbed State lands "free-sheet" and went about the busi­ness of quar­ry­ing. To ex­ac­er­bate the sit­u­a­tion, the state re­moved from the mon­i­tor­ing of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to over­see quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions through the is­su­ing of a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance for quar­ry­ing on parcels of land less than 150 acres.

The ab­solute dis­as­ter is that most lo­cal quar­ries fall un­der the 150-acre lim­it and so their op­er­a­tors are not re­quired to ap­proach the EMA for a CEC to op­er­ate. The log­ic of that leg­is­la­tion be­fud­dles be­cause this is a small coun­try where un­reg­u­lat­ed quar­ry­ing in one part of the coun­try can have a dis­as­trous im­pact on an­oth­er part of the coun­try. Cer­tain­ly, this is a sit­u­a­tion which needs to be im­me­di­ate­ly re­versed to al­low the EMA to re­gain su­per­vi­sion of all quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions, with­out re­gard to the size of the acreage be­ing mined. As­sured­ly, there must be a crim­i­nal­iza­tion of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions com­plete with heavy fines and cus­to­di­al sen­tences for those who vi­o­late the law. These are vi­tal and ir­re­place­able re­sources and all in­stances of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing must at­tract the sever­est penal­ties al­low­able. For too long, the quar­ry­ing of sand, rock and oth­er forms of ag­gre­gate has tak­en on all of the gang­ster-like char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Wild, Wild West–new lands that are cap­tured and po­liced by crim­i­nals with­out re­gard to mun­dane is­sues like the rule of law and re­spect for au­thor­i­ty. This must stop.

There is a new sher­rif in town and she must ex­ert her au­thor­i­ty over this law­less­ness. Pass­ing leg­is­la­tion is nec­es­sary but not suf­fi­cient. Dai­ly all kinds of laws are wan­ton­ly tram­pled up­on with the per­pe­tra­tors ful­ly aware that the chances of them be­ing caught and pros­e­cut­ed are slim. The up­dat­ing and pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion on the en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing land min­ing, must be­come op­er­a­tional with re­sources com­mit­ted to polic­ing the laws. And here we come to what must be a se­ri­ous over­sight on the part of the new Prime Min­is­ter in choos­ing her Cab­i­net with­out hav­ing a min­istry ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing and en­hanc­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. This is sur­pris­ing giv­en the fact that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship was able to gar­ner much of the en­vi­ron­men­tal vote be­cause of its stat­ed op­po­si­tion to the es­tab­lish­ment of a smelter. What makes the over­sight more re­gret­table is the num­ber of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive is­sues now at stake. The pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of a smelter, the rapid rail project slat­ed to run through hun­dreds of acres of land and the de­vel­op­ment of land for food pro­duc­tion pur­pos­es are but a few. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar should im­me­di­ate­ly re­dress the Cab­i­net over­sight or run the risk of ex­pos­ing the en­vi­ron­ment to fur­ther abuse.