8 SUNDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2020
NEWS ANALYSIS
SUNDAY EXPRESS
CHANGES COMING: Grande L’Anse Bay and Mission Beach. —Photo: IERE EYE ARIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
TOCO
The creature that ate the blue lagoon BY MARK MEREDITH
THE Dr Keith Rowley Government’s vision for the Toco port can now be seen on YouTube. The five-minute fantasy animation sweeps us along broad avenues with coconut palms and shady trees, past grand buildings several stories high. Neatly ordered cars are parked in rows beneath leafy trees, others lined up like columns of tanks waiting to invade Tobago. The Government hopes this phalanx of vehicles will be regularly carried by the ferry T&T Spirit shown docked on one of many piers; the daily invasion force booked ot by overwhelming popular demand. Gun-metal grey vessels with mounted machine guns on the bow are tied up on another dock waiting, as though to repel some foreign force; perhaps to hold back any more yachts and pleasure craft like those already moored in the smart marina. Doubtless their skippers were drawn by the attraction of navigating the treacherous waters surrounding Toco, where the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea collide, so they can reach this haven on the wild north coast just for the thrill of it. Enclosing this vast structure and platoon of fat, squat fuel tanks and endless acres of concrete is a massive sea wall closing around the port. Moored to it are large oil industry service vessels. Looking at the Ministry of Works and Transport’s movie it is unclear whether to class it under the genre of science fiction, horror, or both: The Creature that ate the blue lagoon. If you are a Toco resident who has grown up with a view of lovely Grande L’Anse Bay, of the surf rolling in from the pale blue ocean on a freshening morning breeze, or perhaps enjoyed its beaches for weekend limes or for your daily
constitutional, this is a horror film beyond imagination. Life as you have known it in Toco will be over when this mammoth structure – as foreign to the charms of Toco as a human settlement is to the surface of Mars – begins its lengthy, noisy, dirty and obtrusive construction. The National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO) and its UK-based consultants, ERM, who describe themselves as “the world’s leading sustainability consultancy”, produced a slide presentation of the “Toco Multi-purpose Environmental Impact Assessment” (EIA) at a “Public Disclosure Meeting” a week before Christmas (The official EIA document is yet to be published). It explains how Toco as we know it will vanish. They did not hold the meeting on a weekend, in the daytime, when so many interested parties would like to have attended. Instead they held it at night on the Monday before Christmas when the majority of citizens may well have had other matters on their mind, and understandably did not want to travel the tortuous Toco road in the dark. One man who did, Reginald Mac Lean, owner/manager of Res-Com Construction Ltd, complained it took him nine-and-a-half hours to attend the Toco consultation and get back to Port of Spain. Is it any wonder the meeting was poorly attended? It begs the crucial question about who would want to travel the very long, twisting route to Toco to queue to catch a ferry to Tobago? Or from Scarborough to Toco all the way to Port of Spain? Mac Lean, who is scathing about the project, is quick to dissuade people of the idea the “highway” the Government is building from Valencia to Toco is actually a highway. It isn’t, he says. Instead it is a “widened two-
A LOOK AT THE LAYOUT: An aerial viewpoint showing some of the port and its scale.
lane, extremely winding roadway. There will be many traffic lights along the way going through the various villages, etc. It’s going to be an extra long drive. The elderly are not going to be able to endure that drive.” The Government’s optimistic ferry forecasts smack of delusion, as zero data has been produced to show people will undertake this marathon journey. ERM even say, “Recent trends show declining ferry passenger and freight volume to Tobago”. Mac Lean points out that “everything that has to be trucked to Toco to be loaded onto the ferry and then transported to Tobago is going to cost more”. ERM say that the dredge and fill material for the port reclamation (98,000 m2) will be sourced from the road upgrade. The trouble with that is ERM say it is “unclear if the Valencia Main Road upgrade will be ready for port construction.” That suggests the cart is being put way before the horse. There is confusion about the length of time the road will take to be finished. Mac Lean said five years for the road was the figure given by ERM at the meeting, but we’ve been told
of an even longer period. ERM say three to five years is the timescale for the port. We asked NIDCO for clarification, as well as Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan. There was no response. Logic dictates that if the fill – several thousand truckloads – is not available from the road it will have to come from somewhere else. That somewhere else is likely to be the seabed of Grand L’Asne Bay which is already losing 100,000 cubic metres (including corals) to dredging, according to ERM. The rock-fill for the port’s huge claw, the breakwater, will be sourced from Studley Park Quarry in Tobago, brought in piecemeal by boat. Something else which will be brought in by barge on the “extremely rough” north coast is diesel, 750,000 gallons of it. Mac Lean said: “It’ll be an environmental nightmare when the barge sinks.” ERM warns of maritime accident risks near Toco and Scarborough. ERM describes the present road route “as narrow, with sharp
turns, minimal clearance, frequent obstructions, and low traffic volumes”. There will be “increased traffic congestion and safety risks on routes to Toco...road infrastructure deterioration especially on Toco and Paria roads due to heavy truck traffic”. While the new road is being built the poor, existing route will be pounded into submission by heavy trucks, and the people of Toco and visitors to north east Trinidad will be stuck behind them. For years. Not to worry: ERM recommend providing “regular road and port maintenance”, where in Trinidad, of course, road maintenance is second to none. As one exasperated hotelier argued, “The road is literally falling apart and they can’t fix it, but they can spend (millions) on advertising in the local elections.” The trouble with employing a foreign consultancy firm, apart from the cost, is that they do not understand Trinidad and the way it works, or doesn’t. ERM’s suggestion to “Implement a community grievance mechanism” is proof of that. For ERM to live up to their