An­na-Lisa Paul

The pro­pos­al to re­move the nat­ur­al grass which cov­ers the Nel­son Man­dela Park in St Clair and re­place it with 3D as­tro­turf is not cast in stone.

And while Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez as­sures it will not cost the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (PoSCC) a cent to in­stall, as it will be done via a Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP), he is urg­ing cit­i­zens to em­brace change.

Yes­ter­day, Mar­tinez said al­though the idea was first brought to the cor­po­ra­tion a few years ago, it was shelved - and had now been brought to the fore once again as part of Gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­vi­talise the city as they look to de­vel­op and mon­e­tise as­sets.

Fol­low­ing its first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion last Mon­day, Mar­tinez said, “It doesn’t mean it is a done deal or that we have al­ready se­cured a provider or any­thing like that.”

He ex­plained the ra­tio­nale be­hind the pro­pos­al.

Claim­ing the city coun­cil con­tin­ues to re­ceive “re­quests for use of spaces that we don’t have in the city of Port-of-Spain,” Mar­tinez said when they looked at the events which are ac­com­mo­dat­ed dai­ly at the Nel­son Man­dela Park, which in­cludes a play area for chil­dren, ten­nis, foot­ball, rug­by, crick­et, cy­cling, jog­gers and keep fit class­es – it was de­ter­mined that it is an area with fa­cil­i­ties that can gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue but which is cur­rent­ly un­der-utilised.

He said among the cur­rent chal­lenges fac­ing them are holes that need to be filled in, while the grass is not prop­er­ly main­tained.

The may­or said they looke­dat the sit­u­a­tion and ex­am­ined­how oth­er coun­tries were im­prov­ing their green spaces.

“We looked at the pro­pos­al to make it a mul­ti-sport fa­cil­i­ty, where we can play foot­ball, net­ball, bas­ket­ball, hock­ey, rug­by…and when we spoke in the con­sul­ta­tion, peo­ple men­tioned things like skate-board­ing, bik­ing and vol­ley­ball to en­cour­age young peo­ple.”

Con­front­ed with ar­gu­ments that this move would ad­verse­ly im­pact the eco­log­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors of scale, Mar­tinez added: “From what I have been told, the third gen­er­a­tion as­tro­turf now is not like what you would see down at Tacarigua, which is first gen­er­a­tion as­tro­turf. This new as­tro­turf is be­ing used by a lot of sport­ing dis­ci­plines around the world and it is al­so eas­i­er to main­tain and you are able to get a lot more us­age out of it. It is de­signed for per­fo­ra­tion, so it al­lows wa­ter to go through the turf be­cause they use fi­bres ver­sus resin.”

Say­ing the city coun­cil was al­so in the process of do­ing its own re­search in­to the ben­e­fits of the pro­posed move, Mar­tinez said a sec­ond pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion will be held short­ly.

“The as­tro­turf is not to take away from the green space or the leisure area, be­cause that is still there. The ob­jec­tive be­hind it is to give the pub­lic some­thing more and in mov­ing to re­vi­talise the city of Port-of-Spain, we are look­ing at all the op­tions avail­able to us.”

Asked how they in­tend to man­age the fa­cil­i­ty and keep out stray an­i­mals and home­less peo­ple, Mar­tinez said stricter man­age­ment rules will be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure the stan­dard is main­tained.

He as­sured, “At the end of the day, we want to en­sure the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port-of-Spain hap­pens in a very con­struc­tive, re­spect­ful and en­joy­able way. We want par­tic­i­pa­tion from cit­i­zens and that all stake­hold­ers, that is, the cit­i­zens can ben­e­fit from it.”

He ad­mit­ted they want­ed to move the time­lines faster but in­di­cat­ed it had to be done in tan­dem with the con­cerns raised and en­sure there was no ad­verse en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

Gary Aboud: Stu­pid de­ci­sion

Al­though en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Gary Aboud yes­ter­day de­scribed the pro­pos­al as in­cred­i­ble, he said it was, “A shock­ing move in the wrong di­rec­tion.”

Chal­leng­ing the may­or to plant trees along the pe­riph­ery of the park in­stead, he said such green spaces en­cour­age peo­ple to com­mune with na­ture and any move to re­move the nat­ur­al flo­ra and fau­na “would pro­hib­it wa­ter fil­tra­tion in­to the nat­ur­al wa­ter aquifer.”

Say­ing the pro­pos­al was “an in­cred­i­bly stu­pid ap­proach to the preser­va­tion of nat­ur­al spaces” which al­so en­sure per­sons can en­joy fresh air, Aboud point­ed out that T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to the Paris Agree­ment and with glob­al em­pha­sis now be­ing fo­cused on pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, this would be a back­ward step.

He con­clud­ed, “With the great­est of re­spect, some­body must be drink­ing some very pow­er­ful pun­cheon to have come up with this idea. This has to be the most stu­pid idea I have ever heard.”

He said it was lu­di­crous and not en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able, adding the long-term ef­fects would be ev­i­dent in the in­abil­i­ty by such green spaces to ab­sorb run-off dur­ing rain­fall events.