Across Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are at least 90 known quar­ries where mil­lions of dol­lars in ag­gre­gate and min­er­als like stone, clay, grav­el, sea sand, red sand, as­phalt, tar sands and oth­er raw ma­te­ri­als are re­moved and used for con­struc­tion, in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing pur­pos­es.

There are al­so oth­er quar­ries un­known to the au­thor­i­ties.

Of all the quar­ries, on­ly eight were li­cenced by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries as of Sep­tem­ber 29, 2020.

The eight li­cenced op­er­a­tions are Best­crete Lim­it­ed in the Mela­jo For­est Re­serve in Matu­ra; ANSA McAL Lim­it­ed in De­pot Road, Long­denville; Min­er­al Mines of Trinidad Lim­it­ed in Ve­ga de Oropouche; Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in Co­co Road, Clax­ton Bay; Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in Mil­ton Vil­lage, Cou­va; AADS Mul­ti-Task­ing Lim­it­ed in Rio Grande Trace, Matu­ra; Fir­ma Fab­ri­ca­tion and Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed in the Male­jo For­est Re­serve in San­gre Grande; and Seereer­am Broth­ers Lim­it­ed in Con­gre­jal Road, San­ta Cruz.

Every oth­er quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion in T&T, whether it is oc­cur­ring on pri­vate or state-owned land, is il­le­gal (un­less it was reg­is­tered af­ter Sep­tem­ber 2020).

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 12(1) of the Min­er­als Act Chap­ter 61:03, “No per­son shall ex­plore for mine, process or im­port or ex­port min­er­als ex­cept un­der the au­thor­i­ty of a li­cense is­sued un­der this Act.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 45(1) of the Act, “A per­son who ex­plores for, or mines, process­es, im­ports or ex­ports any ma­te­r­i­al with­out a li­cense is­sued un­der this Act; or mines in an area that is not a min­ing zone com­mits an of­fence and shall, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, be li­able to a fine of $500,000 and 5 years im­pris­on­ment, and in the case of a sub­se­quent con­vic­tion for such of­fence, shall be li­able to a fine of $700,000 and 7 years im­pris­on­ment.”

If the known il­le­gal op­er­a­tors were pros­e­cut­ed and fined ac­cord­ing to the act, it could gen­er­ate up­wards of $41 mil­lion in fines alone.

The after-effect of quarrying in Ravine Sable, Longdenville.

KERWIN PIERRE

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the con­struc­tion and quar­ry­ing in­dus­try ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $22.65 bil­lion of the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct be­tween the years 2000 to 2004.

That made it the fourth high­est-earn­ing sec­tor in that pe­ri­od be­hind pe­tro­le­um in­dus­tries, dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices, and fi­nance, in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and busi­ness ser­vices.

How­ev­er, de­spite the sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey in­volved in the in­dus­try, long-stand­ing is­sues with the col­lec­tion of roy­al­ties per­sist.

Ac­cord­ing to a State of the Ex­trac­tive Sec­tors Re­port 2021 by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive, the Gov­ern­ment is owed $193 mil­lion in roy­al­ties from min­ing op­er­a­tions dat­ing back to 2005.

The re­port, in an at­tempt to put the fig­ure in­to con­text, said the State spent $208 mil­lion on the Min­istry of Labour’s On-The-Job Train­ing Pro­gramme (OJT) and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment’s Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) in 2019 alone. Mean­ing, the mon­ey be­ing owed could be put to use in sup­port­ing the econ­o­my and fund­ing pro­grammes for cit­i­zens.

It added, “This non-pay­ment is un­ten­able. The cal­cu­la­tion and col­lec­tion of roy­al­ties re­ly on ef­fec­tive sys­tems to record pro­duc­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Min­istry of En­er­gy re­lies on self-re­ports from op­er­a­tors.

“There was no doc­u­ment­ed sys­tem that al­lowed the Min­istry to cap­ture all the ex­ist­ing quar­ry op­er­a­tors (both reg­is­tered and un­reg­is­tered) for the pur­pose of col­lect­ing roy­al­ties due.”

As a re­sult, the re­port found that op­er­a­tors in de­fault of sub­mis­sions are not record­ed or no­ti­fied of their ar­rears.

So, the ques­tion is how much is the State los­ing out in po­ten­tial earn­ings through il­le­gal quar­ry­ing?

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive, the coun­try is falling short in max­imis­ing the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of min­ing op­er­a­tions.

Its 2021 spe­cial re­port said, “The min­ing sec­tor has al­ways been a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T. For over a decade, the sec­tor’s well-pub­li­cised short­com­ings have been de­lib­er­at­ed. These prob­lems in­clude il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, roy­al­ty pay­ment short­falls, en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact on wa­ter­cours­es/wa­ter­shed zones and for­est and land degra­da­tion, plus an out­dat­ed pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

“There is an ur­gent need for bet­ter over­sight and ad­min­is­tra­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry ef­fi­cien­cy.”

In the ab­sence of ad­e­quate over­sight and en­force­ment, scores of il­le­gal op­er­a­tions re­main ac­tive across the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, each op­er­a­tion has the po­ten­tial to earn hun­dreds of thou­sands while some rake in more than a mil­lion dol­lars every month.

Based on in­ves­ti­ga­tions, one il­le­gal red sand quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion in cen­tral Trinidad is earn­ing as much as $250,000 per week, un­taxed.

The op­er­a­tion sells one cu­bic yard of red sand for $100 to con­struc­tion con­trac­tors. Each of the op­er­a­tion’s trucks can trans­port up to ten cu­bic yards per trip, mean­ing each trip can earn op­er­a­tors up to $1,000. Mul­ti­ple trucks make mul­ti­ple trips every day, six days a week.

A 2013 re­port by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs es­ti­mat­ed that the coun­try had a po­ten­tial re­serve of 326 mil­lion tonnes of red sand–equiv­a­lent to 1.2 bil­lion cu­bic yards.

A portion of the quarry in Ravine Sable Road, Longdenville, that has been dug up.

KERWIN PIERRE

Young promised to tack­le crim­i­nal­i­ty, gang­ster­ism in the op­er­a­tion

Ear­li­er this year, in May, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said that based on his find­ings as for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is tied up with crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“It is re­al crim­i­nal­i­ty and a re­al prob­lem...I am not one to make veiled or shad­ow threats. Go­ing for­ward as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, that is an area that you, the peo­ple of T&T, can rest as­sured, I will be fo­cus­ing on a cer­tain amount of pri­or­i­ty and ef­fort in tack­ling that scourge,” he said.

“The il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is not on­ly de­stroy­ing our en­vi­ron­ment, but it is al­so gang­ster­ism.”

There have been re­ports of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in Matu­ra, St He­le­na, San­gre Grande, Mara­cas Val­ley, Manuel Con­go, Long­denville, as well as in oth­er ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to pro­fes­sor of Trop­i­cal Is­land Ecol­o­gy John Agard, there have long been en­vi­ron­men­tal com­plaints from com­mu­ni­ties where il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is present.

List­ing il­le­gal op­er­a­tions in Mara­cas Val­ley as an ex­am­ple, he said the ac­tiv­i­ty can cause flood­ing, land­slides and a de­crease in wa­ter qual­i­ty.

The co-chair of the Unit­ed Na­tions 2023 Glob­al Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Re­port Team said it re­mains some­what of a mys­tery as to how so many quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions–which re­quire a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance and per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment’s Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion–are pro­ceed­ing as nor­mal.

Prof Agard’s claims about the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of quar­ry­ing are sup­port­ed in a 2001 re­port on In­te­grat­ing the Man­age­ment of Wa­ter­sheds and Coastal Ar­eas in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, pre­pared by the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency, quar­ry­ing prac­tices have con­tributed to the wide-scale degra­da­tion of many wa­ter­sheds.

“The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that the hy­dro­log­i­cal re­sponse of rivers to rain­fall has changed over the years due to such degra­da­tion. Peak flows are thought to have in­creased while base flows seem to be low­er than pre­vi­ous­ly com­put­ed, lead­ing to the as­sump­tion that to­tal wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty has de­creased,” the re­port said.

“High­er sed­i­ment yields lead­ing to an in­crease in the cost of drink­ing wa­ter pro­duc­tion and more reg­u­lar main­te­nance of wa­ter treat­ment plants, to­geth­er with in­creased in­ci­dences of flood­ing in ar­eas along the east-west Cor­ri­dor and in the Ca­roni basin.”

Af­ter parts of west, cen­tral and south Trinidad faced heavy flood­ing last month, The Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­istry in a state­ment promised to step up its en­force­ment of en­vi­ron­men­tal laws.

It said il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, like quar­ry­ing, were con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to flood­ing dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high rain­fall.

Donny Parasram Sookdeo shows activities at the quarry in Ravine Sable Road, Longdenville.

KERWIN PIERRE

Bleed­ing the en­vi­ron­ment

Ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Min­istry’s list­ing of li­cenced quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions, there is one li­cenced op­er­a­tion in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, but that isn’t the on­ly op­er­a­tion in town.

For more than two decades, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions have brought much-need­ed em­ploy­ment to the vil­lage of Ravine Sable.

But it al­so brought trou­ble.

In 2010, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, un­der for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, was called in to do emer­gency work in the area.

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing by a pri­vate con­trac­tor–who leased lands from the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion–caused a lake to form, al­so con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the cre­ation of a mas­sive canyon.

Ac­cord­ing to the then di­rec­tor of Drainage Shamshad Mo­hammed, if emer­gency work was not per­formed to curb the crater’s ex­pan­sion, Ravine Sable Vil­lage could dis­ap­pear un­der­ground.

“Quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, cou­pled with flood­ing from the Ca­paro Riv­er, are be­lieved to be the cause of the re­cent cre­ation of a gi­gan­tic canyon with a lake along the Old Train­line Road, which is threat­en­ing to fur­ther erode in­to the vil­lage,” he said in 2010.

“We have to strength­en the pe­riph­ery of the lake to pre­vent the bank from be­ing bro­ken on that side.”

Ter­ri­fied vil­lagers, at the time, said they were not on­ly scared and wor­ried of the ex­ten­sive land ero­sion threat­en­ing their vil­lage, but al­so scared of those in­volved in the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

They said dust from the quar­ry af­fect­ed them se­vere­ly dur­ing a re­cent drought, and when they planned to protest they were in­tim­i­dat­ed.

They were al­so pre­vent­ed from ac­cess­ing the quar­ry­ing site by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

Giv­en the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in the area, Warn­er, the then min­is­ter of works, rec­om­mend­ed ces­sa­tion of all quar­ry­ing.

The min­istry built an em­bank­ment along the vil­lage side of the lake, sav­ing the vil­lage from fur­ther dam­age.

Eleven years lat­er, how­ev­er, a large-scale il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion con­tin­ues to flour­ish in Ravine Sable at a re­lent­less rate.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the quar­ry­ing site, via Ric­ki Trace, on Thurs­day morn­ing, we met acres of land carved open by ex­ca­va­tors and trac­tors.

The once-green faces of Ravine Sable’s hills, lo­cat­ed near the quar­ry’s pond, seemed to bleed red sand.

As we watched, an ex­ca­va­tor quick­ly pulled down and gath­ered sand, be­fore load­ing it in­to trucks.

Sev­er­al of the trucks drove in and out of the site, via the nar­row dirt road, car­ry­ing the ma­te­r­i­al.

But be­fore long, a ve­hi­cle pulled up next to ours.

The dri­ver then drove the ve­hi­cle across a dirt trail to the quar­ry­ing site and the ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tor and truck dri­vers stopped work.

Ac­cord­ing to our in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the per­son re­spon­si­ble for the mas­sive op­er­a­tion is from the area and owns sev­er­al acres of land where the quar­ry­ing was tak­ing place.

The op­er­a­tion is tak­ing tonnes of red sand and stock­pil­ing it at a site a short dis­tance away.

The ma­te­r­i­al is then sold at around $100 per cu­bic yard and loaded on trucks car­ry­ing as much as ten cu­bic yards per trip.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the op­er­a­tion could be mak­ing as much as $1,000,000 per month, un­taxed and with­out its op­er­a­tors pay­ing roy­al­ties to the State.

Al­though the op­er­a­tor is the own­er of the land, there is no li­cence un­der the Min­er­al Act to ex­tract ma­te­r­i­al there.

If charged un­der the act, as a first of­fence, the op­er­a­tor can face up to $500,000 in fines and five years im­pris­on­ment.

And ac­cord­ing to the act, even if the quar­ry op­er­a­tor wish­es to ap­ply for a li­cence, he is un­like­ly to be grant­ed one.

Sec­tion 14(1)(c) states that “No li­cense shall be is­sued to any per­son to ex­plore, mine or process any ma­te­ri­als up­on–any land with­in such dis­tance of a riv­er, lake, stream, reser­voir or bund, as may be pre­scribed, with­out the ap­proval of the Min­is­ter to whom re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the land is as­signed.”

How­ev­er, while most of the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ap­pears to be tak­ing place on land owned by the op­er­a­tor, it ap­pears quar­ry­ing is al­so be­ing un­der­tak­en on pieces of state land and land be­long­ing to oth­ers.

Scars left on a hill on state land, near the lake’s em­bank­ment, was ev­i­dence of this.

The em­bank­ment, built by the State back in 2010 to save the vil­lage, was al­so quar­ried for ma­te­r­i­al, re­sult­ing in in­creas­ing­ly high­er wa­ter lev­els.

Ac­cord­ing to con­trac­tor Don­ny Paras­ram Sookdeo, the op­er­a­tor has been quar­ry­ing his (Sookdeo) land heav­i­ly since Feb­ru­ary.

He said he has tried go­ing to the po­lice to get re­dress, but se­nior of­fi­cers told him that while they are aware of the is­sue, they are un­able to act at this time.

Sookdeo claimed he spoke to an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, but the per­son told him his best bet was to go to the me­dia.

“It is to­tal law­less­ness...There are plen­ty of parts of the coun­try where this is tak­ing place...They have no reg­is­tered com­pa­ny, noth­ing. Tax-free mon­ey,” Sookdeo said.

“Now this isn’t like some ve­hi­cle they thief and they could go and re­cov­er it in a garage some­where. This is raw ma­te­r­i­al. They dig­ging it there, stock­pil­ing it and sell­ing it one time, and dis­trib­ut­ing it.”

Hav­ing re­port­ed the op­er­a­tion sev­er­al times to the po­lice and Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs over the years, he said it was shut down tem­porar­i­ly in 2018.

It restart­ed a week lat­er.

Sookdeo said in his fight to pro­tect his land–for which he showed proof of doc­u­ments–he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous death threats.

“They send four men–Ras­ta City men–for me in June 2016. This van was six months old. They shoot it up. I write it off. My life is at risk. It is not hard for me to give a gang­ster $40,000 or $50,000 and say, so and so is the case. I don’t know what the po­lice are wait­ing on be­cause by the time they come, my thing thief out and gone,” he lament­ed.

“They are vi­o­lent and trou­ble is easy to come. I’m beg­ging the au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­vene and shut down this...I have fam­i­ly, that’s why I am ap­peal­ing to the law.”

Donny Parasram Sookdeo made a report to the police after being threatened.

No word from Young, TTPS

Guardia Me­dia reached out to Young on the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, which con­tin­ues un­abat­ed. How­ev­er, we did not re­ceive any re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

We al­so reached out to the po­lice ser­vice which formed an Il­le­gal Quar­ry­ing Unit in 2019, how­ev­er, there was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.