The nuisance from the landfill fire had diminished a bit by Sunday, certainly compared to the huge blaze on Friday. The Junior Carnival Parade’s route was nevertheless adjusted to keep it away from areas still affected by the smoke.
This last-minute change caused some confusion and was not appreciated by all. However, most felt that the wellbeing of especially the children participating in and watching the event was paramount.
In addition to a serious health and environmental hazard, this seemingly-never-ending issue with the dumps on Pond Island is now threatening to hurt the local tourism economy already dealt a devastating blow by monster Hurricane Irma. Carnival Fascination had been advised that it might be better to go elsewhere, but after assessing the situation early in the morning thankfully continued its Saturday visit as normal.
The ship carries 2,634 passengers and 920 crew who, according to figures provided during the Seatrade Cruise Global Conference in March, on average spend respectively US $191.26 and $149.66 per person while in port. One merely needs to do the math to figure out that had the call been cancelled, the destination would have missed out on a whopping US $503,778.84 plus $137,687.20; for a grand total of $641,466,04.
Particularly at a time when the very livelihood of the people is under so much pressure, St. Maarten can ill-afford this type of financial loss or what kind of image the entire incident portrays.
Everyone agrees that something must be done about the garbage problem and in the long run a joint solution together with the French side that includes proper collection, separation, storage and re-use indeed appears to be the best option. To be sure, the burning tyres that caused black soot to cover parts of the Dutch side were supposedly going to be recycled abroad, but were located near a faulty incinerator that caused them to ignite.
For the short term the management of both the sanitary landfill and the so-called Irma dump with hurricane debris should be significantly improved without further delay and efforts made to prevent these detrimental constant fires. Nothing less will simply do.
