'round here real [bleep]-up yuh

Mullins Beach January 2, 2011  (click image to enlarge)

You probably didn't want me to quote the expletive anyhow but the above title of this post was borrowed verbatim from a Road View youth on seeing the beach at Mullins yesterday for the first time since recent persistent heavy northerly swells in the area have stripped the beach of most of its sand yet again. As you can see from the above photo, tourists escaping the frigid north had a tough time finding a spot to thaw out in the sun, and if they did find one - keeping themselves and their towels dry from the surf. Yes, Mullins Beach is in a total mess once again - and in the height of the tourist season as usual.

If Mullins looks like this, and it is supposedly one of the best beaches on the "Platinum Coast," you have to wonder what some of the others look like. But does it have to always be this way? We know for a fact that since last winter's erosion the Corruption Zone Coastal Zone Management Unit did absolutely nothing to protect and/or nourish beaches in the area.  We also know for a fact that Mullins Beach is being robbed of natural nourishment by the groynes trapping sand to the north at what is now being called St. Peter's Bay.  The upshot of all of this is that Mullins Beach is getting narrower and narrower so whenever we get these winter storms and swells, which have probably been going on for millennia, the beach gets washed out.

Last month we learned that Government has secured a US$30M loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to study and fix the problems of beach erosion in Barbados.  It is not nearly enough given Mexico's spending US$80M to fix a 7-mile stretch of Cancun's beaches last year, but it's a start.  Normally this should be cause for rejoicing but given the record of our local  Corruption Zone Coastal Zone Management Unit into whose rabbit hole lap most of this money will be poured, and the slow pace at which Government moves, by the time they get around to doing anything about Mullins the beach bar will probably be on stilts in the ocean.

Several years ago Government secured $75M from the same IDB for a West Coast Sewage Project, an urgent necessity  if we are going to save our reefs - let alone have bathe-able/swim-able beaches; but where has all that money gone?  No one seems to know.  We still have no sewage treatment on the west coast and we are building yet more multi-storey beachfront condos.  Where is the IDB's oversight in all of this?  Do they give a damn beyond ensuring the collecting of  interest on these loans on the backs of poor Barbadians?

Indeed, "'round here real [bleep]-up yuh!"

Click here for more pictures of the damage at Mullins Beach.
See also: Beaches On The Brink

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