The planned establishment of a Doppler weather station on the Dutch side administrated by the French side (see related story) is the kind of practical cross-border cooperation one would love to see more of, rather than just the usual speeches about unity every St. Maarten/St. Martin Day.
The next one is in less than three weeks and a lot remains to be done in terms of optimising this unique relationship between two countries sharing a relatively small island with – according to the Treaty of Concordia – free movement of people and goods. For starters, the public is yet to learn of any long-promised solution for the frontier dispute at Oyster Pond between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of France.
After years of haggling over locations it appears the badly-needed joint sewage plant with European funding in the Cole Bay area is finally getting back on track. This is urgent to limit the ongoing pollution with land-based wastewater runoff of Simpson Bay Lagoon, an essential asset to the local tourism economy and particularly the yachting industry.
The next challenge will be to tackle solid waste management in a sustainable way, including collection, separation, processing and recycling. Doing so together simply makes sense due to the economy-of-scale factor.
If indeed hurricanes are becoming bigger, more frequent and stronger because of climate change, having a Doppler radar provide more detailed information on the intensity, position, direction and speed of weather systems can make a huge difference. And it’s not only about tropical storms and hurricanes, because even a very heavy downpour could cause serious flooding, rockslides, etc., as seen in the past.
Perhaps a bit much to ask, but it would be nice if this also partly European-funded project – contrary to some of the other earlier-mentioned ventures – could become an example of effectiveness by completing the job at least before the peak of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Now isn’t that at refreshing thought?
