SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Ch­agua­nas may­or Gopaul Bood­han and coun­cil­lor Lisa Hold­er (En­ter­prise North/Es­mer­al­da) both say they are dis­gust­ed to see the lev­el of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and the un­savoury stench em­a­nat­ing from the Ghan­dia Riv­er at Ra­goo­nanan Road, Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas.And farm­ers are us­ing the pol­lut­ed riv­er wa­ter to ir­ri­gate their crops which can lead to taint­ed veg­eta­bles, said en­vi­ron­men­tal bi­ol­o­gist Dr Shar­da Ma­habir. She warned peo­ple to wash all veg­eta­bles "very clean" be­fore con­sum­ing them.

Dr Ma­habir was speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day morn­ing at a clean-up of part of the riv­er. The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion joined forces with mem­bers of the Col­lec­tor Car Own­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Sco­tia­bank to do the clean-up.

Ma­habir and the clean-up team dis­cov­ered that farm­ers in the area were us­ing stag­nant, pol­lut­ed riv­er wa­ter to ir­ri­gate plants with a sys­tem of over­head sprin­klers. Ma­habir said this prac­tice was not un­com­mon in the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and said many rivers are pol­lut­ed. Ma­habir ad­vised con­sumers to wash veg­eta­bles thor­ough­ly us­ing warm, mild­ly soapy wa­ter: this would pre­vent peo­ple ac­ci­den­tal­ly eat­ing dan­ger­ous bac­te­ria such as E. coli and fe­cal co­l­iform, she said.

Ma­habir, who works with the wa­ter re­sources di­vi­sion of WASA, said con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter was low in oxy­gen con­tent, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for fish to live; such wa­ter may al­so con­tain dan­ger­ous bac­te­ria that can in­tro­duce dis­eases in­to veg­etable fields and re­duce agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.Ac­cord­ing to Ma­habir, WASA's adopt-a-riv­er pro­gramme was de­signed to change the cul­ture and mind­set of peo­ple who see wa­ter­cours­es as large garbage dumps that sim­ply take away rub­bish. She said such con­cepts are far from the truth.

She said T&T has 59 wa­ter­sheds that need pro­tec­tion to en­sure an abun­dant, fu­ture fresh wa­ter sup­ply. May­or Bood­han ap­pealed to peo­ple to stop us­ing wa­ter­cours­es as dump­ing grounds, stat­ing the cor­po­ra­tion would soon be launch­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness pro­gramme in schools to start chang­ing at­ti­tudes at a younger age.