Oil
industry sinking Cedros estates
By Richard Charan, South Bureau
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
05 27 07
Chunka Persad remembers her childhood playing
on a cricket field on a coconut estate at coastal
Icacos Village, Cedros.
Thirty years later that field is now ten feet
underwater and almost a mile offshore.
Cedros has long been sinking, residents said yesterday,
and it did not take a scientist to tell them what
they have been seeing and hearing for decades.
For Anton Gopaul, it is the roar of the surf gobbling
the cliffs at Los Gallos Village, and the crash
of tonnes of rock falling into the sea.
For Vernon Bharath, 23 years the overseer of the
Constance Coconut Estate, it was seeing the beach
house belonging to his boss demolished by the waves
two years ago.
Cedros was reminded of its sinking feeling by
Dr John Agard, chairman of the Environmental Management
Authority (EMA) this week.
At an EMA workshop on Monday, he said that sea
levels were rising faster on the southwest coast
than on the north coast, which suggested that the
land was sinking.
Agard
said apart from much erosion the southwest had
a large petroleum industry and the extraction
of oil and gas from underground "will have
some subsidence".
All along the coast between Fullerton and Icacos
Village, Cedros yesterday were signs that something
was happening.
At the popular Columbus Beach, dozens of coconut
trees were felled across the eroded sand.
Of the four islets out to sea, one had disappeared.
A stump of a lamppost that once ran along a coastal
road, was now on the seashore.
Fisherman
Ashram Maharaj said: "The land
is sinking.
And
sometimes when the tide high, it flows into the
car park and between the trees on land."
Sanjay Mahase said 50 feet offshore, swimmers
could climb upon tree stumps.
Anton
Gopaul said: "There is real and definite
evidence the land is subsiding. There are big potholes
on the beach where they were none before. People
have lost land two lots deep. And it's because
they sucking the oil and gas from the sea."
At
the Constance Estate, Bharath said: "When
the high tide comes, it's almost level with the
land. We tried for years to keep the water back
with walls and boulders."
He
said ten houses were taken by the sea in the
past 30 years "and we know we will lose in
the end".
Trinidad
Express
Wednesday, May 23rd 2007
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