Dear Editor,
Please allow me a few words to praise your recent post regarding posting early-warning flags at beaches to help avert future tragic loss of life, such as occurred recently at Mullet Bay.
Your plan is brilliant; in addition to creating local jobs for life guards, with minimal additional cost to the Government they could ask/require existing beach businesses to merely check to see which flag should be posted for the day as a Beach Danger Warning, and do so. I would suggest supplementing this plan with an additional flag being posted at each beach area. Please follow along with me.
I am not a resident, but a long-time visitor to your (my) island, having spent over 60 weeks on-island over these years. I am fully aware of online discussion boards, where the subject of beach water pollution surfaces regularly. These concerns are usually well founded, by personal reports and often with coverage from your newspaper, as you report Nature Foundation findings, or Government warnings, or even simple news stories of sewage running down streets or bubbling up on Backstreet.
Of course, you must continue to report such findings, but what is missing is any reported follow-up. Was that leak resolved? Was that problem solved? Was that finally flushed out to sea? Was the water re-tested? Is it now healthy? That is much harder to find.
As Government (hopefully) implements a Beach Danger Warning flag system, why not also push for a simple Beach Water Quality Warning, alongside the same flags?
Gary W. Taylor
Visitor
