
Massive amount of money of mud will be dumped on the Demerara fishing grounds
Pricey Editor,
Thank you for securing data from NRG Holdings Ltd. (SN 19 July 2022, ‘Extensive consultations’ held with fisherfolk prior to Demerara dredging things to do – NRG Holdings). I speculate if the sheer volume of mud to be dredged and dumped onto their standard fishing grounds was explained by the company during the concentrate group conferences and general public consultations with the fishermen?
I utilised the dimensions furnished by the chartlet revealed in MARAD Discover to Mariners range 113 dated 28 June 2022, derived from United kingdom Hydrographic Place of work chart number 527. I assumed that the need of EEPGL is to enlarge the Demerara Major Ship Channel to a dredged depth of 15 metres, from sea surface to sea bottom. I believed 10 nautical miles with 10 metres of mud eradicated, 5 nautical miles with 7 metres of dredged mud, and 2.6 nautical miles with 5 metres of dredged mud. I believed the enlarged channel width as an regular of 2.05 nautical miles.
We are not able to inform from the noted job interview by Stabroek Information how considerably of the mud from the cutter suction dredge ‘Zheng He’ will be sprayed ‘west of the channel towards the Demerara River’ and how a great deal mud will by sucked up into the hoppers of the two trailer suction dredges ‘De Bougainville’ and ‘Galileo Galilei’ and then dumped onto the fishing grounds. But the full quantity of wonderful mud estimated as higher than arrives to almost 1000 million cubic metres (= a person cubic kilometre). Perhaps the G-EITI Secretariat can allow your readers know who is funding this huge operate?
Wikipedia gives the place of Georgetown as 70 square kilometres. So if the mud to be dredged and sprayed and dumped have been to be overlain on the Metropolis of Georgetown it would be a layer 14 metres deep. But our Environmental Protection Company does not believe that this tremendous movement of materials and the obliteration of the all-natural sea bed of common fishing grounds needs to be described and justified in an Environmental Effects Assessment?
Editor, I attach a scanned part of British isles Hydrographic Workplace chart amount G519B, the estuary of the Demerara River. These are the maps which are applied by MARAD and Guyana’s Ministry of Finance, among other agencies. The phrases – ‘Demerara River / fishing stakes entry prohibited’ are evidently noticeable. All those terms are also penned on chart quantity G2784 which addresses the estuary of the Berbice River.
Fishers have legal and customary legal rights their rights pre-day all those issued to the oil and gasoline operators and sub-contractors and provider suppliers. Ignored while fishers’ legal rights are, fishers are our sentinels, witnesses to the wholesale unconsulted transformation of their fishing grounds.
Yours actually,
Janette Bulkan