Following repeated complaints about cement dust pollution and the health toll it was taking on residents at Friendship on the East Bank of Demerara, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched an investigation into the ready-mix concrete operations of Forrester’s Concrete.
“The dust is terrible and like it has given me sinus and breathing problems,“ 65-year-old Sita Foo told Sunday Stabroek from her home as she pointed to areas that have to be swept and sprinkled with water everyday so as to keep the cement residue from spreading.
“My granddaughter is nine years old and has asthma and during the day is spared because of school. But at nights, you have to lock up all the windows and make sure everywhere is sealed…,” she added.
Residents said they had complained to the EPA months ago and understand that a cease order had been given to the company.
However, questions remain about why the establishment was allowed to operate for so long, although the EPA itself said that it did not have requisite regulatory permits.
Contacted for a response, Director of the EPA Kemraj Parsram told this newspaper that indeed the company did not have a permit for its operations but that the EPA has to go through an investigative process before action is taken. “Indeed they have a prohibition order. We got a complaint but we can’t just take that [complaint] alone. We have to investigate and then take the next course of action. So a thorough investigation will be done,” he said.
Sunday Stabroek visited the establishment and the community on Thursday afternoon. At Forrester’s, Office Manager Ulrica [only name given] said that the EPA had visited the day before and all work had stopped.
Asked why if there was an EPA cease order they had over the months continued to work, defying it, she said that question would have to be posed to the business’ owner, Andrew Forrester, who was not there at the time. She took the contact numbers for this newspaper and the reporter’s mobile number but up to press time they had not made contact.
However, the Office Manager pointed to a plastic partition that she said was put up to contain the pollution to the business establishment’s yard.
For residents like the Foos, a plastic barrier fence cannot work because the pollutants blow high into the air. And although the company might say that the wind will blow it into the Demerara River, evidence is there on their properties to show that a lot of the time they feel the brunt of the effects.
They feel that it was only after complaints to the newspaper that action was taken.
The Foos and their extended family occupy the majority of the respective homes in the small area that directly faces the Forrester’s location, and they all had similar complaints.
“My mother is 76 years old and is trouble with asthma. When you look out, you want to know is what and is not just the hospital runnings. You whole yard and house covered in cement dust. If my son only forget to cover the car in the night, you don’t want to see it next morning,” Pauline Foo lamented.
At Safari Inn, its owner, Francis Correia, said that he had once owned the business site but sold it to someone who in turned rented the area to Forrester. He said that while dust fills his establishment, he is not sure if it is from the cement mixing or sand sediments from the road.
Correia said that he is usually in his little office and doesn’t venture out much to observe what is happening.
Next door to Forrester’s establishment is a property owned by Nazar ‘Shell’ Mohammed and he told this newspaper that it is was his caretaker who resides at the premises, as it is more of a weekend home for him.
The caretaker, Travis Audain, had a more harrowing story, as he related that he lives with his family on separate quarters on the property, but had to rush his son to the emergency room of a private city hospital, during the wee hours of last Thursday morning. The experience with the child, he said, has now seen his wife take the decision to not return with his son until the situation is straightened out.
“In the nights is when most of the works happens and the dust is unbearable. How can you operate with cement and concrete making in such a reckless manner for the people around you? For months I was complaining and nothing happened. My son would get sick and come back and get sick again. Wednesday night it start up and he take in. We rushed him to the hospital and it was very, very scary for me. They had to admit he and give he oxygen and more things. It was hard…,” he related.
“Now my family used to stay with me and they can’t anymore. Now I can’t see my family. It is so difficult waking up without my family because with them gone, it is just me alone here now. I promised my son that I would be there for him to see him grow up and I want that, as my father did for me,” he added.
He said that bills from taking his son to the hospital amounted to “plenty money” that could have gone to assisting his family.
Audain is pleading with authorities to make right the situation, not just so that his son could be back with him, but so that all residents can “live in peace and just get some clean air in their system”.
Separately, he noted that while he has not seen anyone dumping waste oil into the Demerara River, directly behind the company’s operations there are periodic periods when the water becomes heavily polluted. “Someone is dumping engine waste oil in the river and it runs down. You can’t fish there or anywhere around the area. It is just an environmental hazard,” he contended.
The man is hoping that the EPA would bring a swift end to the issue and that his family can be reunited with him. “I just want clean air for my son. It isn’t easy knowing that you are a family man and you don’t have no family with you. I am hoping it is fixed and if they say they have to investigate, then investigate and solve the problem,” he said.
