Wednesday, July 06, 2011

I'll be on 91.1 FM today speaking with the Gov. Environment people about pollution.

It what is turning out to be a regular thing, I have been invited to be part of a Voice of the People panel on Observer Radion 91.1 FM today. On the internet you can find it on http://www.live365.com/stations/observerradio?site=pro
Today's topic is Pollution and I think they want to speak about something I wrote about last year on my blog as well as other things. The blog had the title Antigua's 366th beach is an ignored government toxic waste dump and you can read more and see the photos here http://antiguaisland.blogspot.com/2010/08/antiguas-366th-beach-is-ignored.html. It's a long read but if you want to understand why the oil from your car, your power company or from anywhere gets into the sea then you should check it out and listen to the program. 365Antigua.com's Rob Breadner is seen in the images with me and spent quite a bit of his time and energy taking photos and writing about it too. He even re published my blog on his site as he does with many of the eco pieces i write. Check that here: http://www.365antigua.com/cms/content/green-environment-dumping-hazardous-waste-saturday-aug-21st for more photos and better links.

If you don't have time to read them I can just tell you that for generations oil has been dumped into the ground up at Crabbs where we have several oil using power generation plants. The same happens at the West Indies Oil facility. Recently Mr. Harney started a waste oil plant that uses waste oil and mixes it with another fuel oil to produce a diesel equivalent. Its cheaper and supposedly cleaner than the crappy diesel we get here at the pump. He could expand but not without gov. help.
In the meantime used oil is seeping out of the ground and into the sea especially after big rains. Nothing is being done to fix the problem and a new Chinese generation plant has been built and reports are that there is still no plan for the waste oil it will produce. Read the article. It's interesting!
Of course this radio show will be about pollution in general and there is plenty of it. I also wrote about a massive amount of garbage (mostly plastic) which is washed out of St. Johns each day and especially during rains. See that one and the insane photos here: http://antiguaisland.blogspot.com/2009/09/shocking-photos-and-story-from-st-johns.html
This one was way more simple to fix than the oil but again nothing has been done as far as I know of.
Yesterday I blogged again about another form of pollution. This one is a hard sell here in Antigua where our society seems to think that an Island bathed in brilliant light 24 hours a day is safer and better all around. Again if you have time you should have a read of this blog which has great links, photos and info on how new lighting is killing endangered sea turtles here. http://antiguaisland.blogspot.com/2011/07/chinese-lights-start-killing-turtles-in.html
There is plenty of other pollution going on here in Antigua and this show could be an interesting one. I know that people are mostly going to want to speak about trash on the roads and on the beaches which are big problems too but I hope real issues like the ones above can be talked about too. Please listen and call in if you have time today from 12 until 2 pm and share this note so more people who care about this stuff can hear what our government technicians say. Tag people if you want in this note too (if you can). Thanks, eli.
PS sorry about spelling or grammatical mistakes. I don't care that much about them...