If you like to bathe at any of the beach­es in the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la, you should know that dur­ing the dry sea­son, three out of those six beach­es have fae­cal mat­ter in the wa­ter. It gets worse dur­ing the wet sea­son when all six beach­es have fae­cal mat­ter and the bac­te­ria Es­cherichia coli (E coli) and en­te­ro­coc­ci.

E coli are bac­te­ria found in the en­vi­ron­ment, food and in­testines of peo­ple and an­i­mals that can make you sick while en­te­ro­coc­ci are part of a group of bac­te­ria that oc­curs nat­u­ral­ly in the in­tes­tine but can cause in­flam­ma­tion and blood in­fec­tion if in­tro­duced any­where else in the body.

This ac­cord­ing to a study done in April 2018 by the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) called the “The bathing beach wa­ter qual­i­ty along the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la, Trinidad.”

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by Re­search Of­fi­cer Shel­don Ra­moutar the bac­te­ria come from soil/sand, an­i­mal fae­ces and poor­ly con­struct­ed sewage tanks or sys­tems.

Ra­moutar took sam­ples of sea­wa­ter from six points: the bathing area on the East­ern end of Williams Bay, the bathing area on the mid-East­ern end of Williams Bay, the bathing area on the mid-West­ern end of the Board­walk, Williams Bay, the bathing area on the East­ern end of the Board­walk, the bathing area on the West­ern end of Chagville beach and the bathing area at the cen­tre of Wel­come Bay.

In his re­port, Ra­moutar used Unit­ed States En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (USEPA) pro­to­col to de­ter­mine whether the wa­ter qual­i­ty is safe for the pub­lic to bathe in. The wa­ter sam­pling was done dur­ing the rainy sea­son 2016 and the dry sea­son 2017.

“Sam­ples were col­lect­ed at six nearshore lo­ca­tions dur­ing the months of Ju­ly/Au­gust 2016 (wet sea­son) and Jan­u­ary/Feb­ru­ary 2017 (dry sea­son). Bac­te­r­i­al con­cen­tra­tions at three of the six sam­pling sta­tions along the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la failed the USEPA wa­ter qual­i­ty stan­dards dur­ing the dry sea­son and all six sta­tions failed dur­ing the wet sea­son,” Ra­moutar wrote.

He al­so not­ed that bac­te­ria lev­els found in this study had in­creased when com­pared to stud­ies done in 1981, 1995 and 2013 in the Penin­su­la and warned that bathers should stay away from cer­tain beach­es dur­ing both sea­sons.

“The bac­te­ria lev­els failed in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards at Chagville Beach and Wel­come Bay dur­ing both sea­sons and Williams Bay dur­ing the rainy sea­son. Bathers should be ad­vised to avoid bathing near the west­ern end of the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la (Wel­come Bay and Chagville Beach) through­out the year and to the east­ern end (Williams Bay) dur­ing, and af­ter rain­fall pe­ri­ods due to in­creased ex­po­sure to health risks.”

He said the bac­te­ria lev­els are due in part to the tide that brings de­bris in­to the area and land run-off dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

Ra­moutar al­so not­ed that yachts moored in the area have not proven to be the source of the pol­lu­tants in the bay.

“Even though this area is pop­u­lat­ed with yachts, it should be not­ed from the study con­duct­ed by Bul­lock (2005), that the num­ber of yachts moor­ings in the area had no sig­nif­i­cant cor­re­la­tion to the bac­te­r­i­al con­tent in Wel­come Bay. The da­ta sup­ports an ear­li­er as­sess­ment that sug­gest­ed ur­ban de­vel­op­ment is of­ten a source of fae­cal bac­te­ria in the en­vi­ron­ment.”

Bathers un­aware, un­con­cerned

Dur­ing a vis­it to the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la last week, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed spoke to sev­er­al peo­ple bathing at sev­er­al of the beach­es about whether they are con­cerned about the wa­ter qual­i­ty.

Ju­nior Haynes, who was born and raised in Port of Spain, said he vis­its the Chagville beach at least once a week.

“I have nev­er heard ru­mours that there is waste in this bay, the on­ly prob­lem I have is that the shore a lit­tle bit dirty,” Haynes said.

He said he used to bathe at the Board­walk (Williams Bay) but stopped af­ter rash­es broke out on his skin.

“All my years com­ing here, I nev­er had any­thing break out on my skin but when I used to go by the board­walk I used to get rash­es on my skin when I come out the wa­ter.”

Alex­is Nakhid, 52, said he too has been bring­ing his fam­i­ly to the Penin­su­la for years. Nakhid said he choos­es Ch­aguara­mas over the pop­u­lar Mara­cas beach, which is clos­er to his St Joseph home be­cause the wa­ter is calmer for his young chil­dren to bathe in.

“Every time I get a lit­tle chance, I bring them here to bathe. If I go by the board­walk you have to pay $20 to park across the road and I don’t like them cross­ing the road to get stuff from the van. I come here be­cause it hard­ly has peo­ple dur­ing the week and the wa­ter is not rough like Mara­cas Bay so I bring them here.”

Asked if he was wor­ried about him­self or his chil­dren falling ill from bathing in the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter, Nakhid said, “I hear­ing a talk that peo­ple bathing in s... wa­ter but the sea is some­thing that heals, if you have a sick­ness, peo­ple say come in the sea and bathe, it will heal up every­thing so I don’t take on what any­body have to say. The sea wa­ter salty and it safe to bathe in, it killing any bac­te­ria.”

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed con­tact­ed Ra­moutar who said the ide­al way to en­light­en the pub­lic of the dan­gers of bathing at these beach­es would have been warn­ing signs.

How­ev­er, he said these were put up in the past but re­moved by beach­go­ers.

“The ide­al step would be to place bill­boards with warn­ing signs but this didn’t work in the past. CDA (Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty) many years ago placed signs warn­ing bathers not to bath af­ter heavy rain­falls etc but the bathers re­moved the signs, they were nev­er re­placed.”

He said he was un­sure whether the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s (EMA) promise to place signs at the beach­es was ever car­ried out, but said the IMA was hop­ing to place their own bill­boards soon.

“The IMA is cur­rent­ly seek­ing funds to place elec­tron­ic re­al-time da­ta bill­boards at the pop­u­lar beach­es through both is­lands.”

CDA silent

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed has made sev­er­al at­tempts over the past two weeks to con­tact the CDA for a com­ment on the find­ings of the IMA. How­ev­er, mes­sages left with the CDA’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary on April 17 and with the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer on April 25 were not re­turned. Ef­forts to reach CDA chair­man Nar­ine Gupte Lutch­me­di­al on his cell­phone on April 16, April 17, April 24 and April 25 were al­so un­suc­cess­ful. Lutch­me­di­al did not re­turn any of the calls.

Fae­cal mat­ter found at 6 points:

• Bathing area on the East­ern end of Williams Bay

• Bathing area on the mid-East­ern end of Williams Bay

• Bathing area on the mid-West­ern end of the Board­walk, Williams Bay

• Bathing area on the East­ern end of the Board­walk

• Bathing area on the West­ern end of Chagville beach

• Bathing area at the cen­tre of Wel­come Bay