Part II - Our Solution

The good news is that we have a plan. The bad news is that it’s a really expensive plan, it’s a lot of work and it will take a long time. But there’s a plan, so let’s focus on that. What this plan involves was the focus of a two hour meeting last week, and there’s a lot to it. But, essentially, it can be boiled down into two main components. The first is an emergency fire plan that would allow us to quickly locate and put out fires. This is a short term solution that is designed to tide us over until we reach the second part of plan. This is a program to rehydrate the morass and get it back to something resembling its original state.

The fire emergency plan has several components to it. We will need to build fire towers at strategic points throughout the morass so that we can pinpoint the exact location of fires when the break out. We also need to buy vehicles that can go into the swamp and get around to get to the fires (swamp buggies were an idea that was thrown out there, and I’m really hoping I’ll still be around in time to take a ride in a swamp buggy). A lot of these fires are in places that are simply inaccessible, and so the fire department has to wait until it gets to an area that it can access, which is likely close to houses or businesses, opening up a whole nother lever of danger. We are also going to work with the fire department and the local communities to educate them about fires in the morass and what can be done about it. A lot of people just don’t understand the dangers of the morass burning, and don’t know how or why these fires start. Hopefully through quick action to stop fires, and public education we can lower the impact and amount of fires while we work on part two…

Part 2 is a lot more complicated. It involves rehydrating the morass and restoring it so that it can become something of a healthy and functional wetland. The most effective way to do that would be to just dam up the canals that were built 50 years ago, but since that’s not going happen, we have another plan. One thing that complicates rehydrating the morass (well, there are several things, but anyway…) is that there are actually 1,000’s of small canals in the morass that were put in for farming or other drainage. So while the water runs out of 2 major canals, it will also run out of these smaller ones. And we know these are out there, but we’re not sure exactly where because there are no good GIS maps of the morass. This also means that we don’t know exactly where the hot spots are (no pun intended…) for the fire. So we’re not sure exactly where the most strategic place is to pump the water into. We’re going to generate those maps, but that takes time. We’re hoping to have them done by next summer so that we can start implementing this rehydration plan as soon as possible.

The other main complication is what water to use. There is a large sewage treatment plant nearby the morass that could be used, but in the current state, the water is not treated beyond the initial level. Raw sewage needs at least 2, if not 3, treatment phases before it can be safely put back into any system. No one can seem to answer the questions of why the plant is so dysfunctional, or if/when it will be functional. Using treated effluent would be ideal for this project, but we are not sure if that is going to be possible, and I’m not sure what the backup plan is for this.

Overall, rehydrating the morass will mean a lot of monitoring, and long term management of the system as a whole. It’s a lot to take on, but it’s vital to the health of Negril and Jamaica. The good news is that there is a lot of support for this project. We are working with an American wetland scientist to design the whole plan, and we had over 40 people from 30 agencies present at the meeting we put together to present the plan. Everyone was supportive, and that’s a huge plus. Hopefully that support will be more than just lip service support, but only time will tell on that one. We are looking to have a lot of this project grant funded, and are also looking into ideas for the project to sustain itself over time, such as an environmental tax paid by hotel guests or a trust set up for the morass. We are finalizing the grant for the first phase though, and hopefully I’ll be able to give you more positive updates on this soon.

For me, this whole situation has made clear something that I’ve thought for a while. Nature is pretty amazing, and has developed ways of making systems work which are far more complex and interconnected than we can imagine. If these systems are left alone, they can work for decades and centuries without a problem. But when people come in and think they can outsmart nature, they pretty much always end up just fucking things up. And once you do that, there’s really no turning back. Inevitably the impact is going to be larger than you had imagined, especially in the long term. And trying to put these systems back into something resembling their natural state is time consuming, nearly impossible, and extremely expensive. I’m not totally against human expansion, but we need to recognize that there are some spaces that we just need to stay out of, and we need to start being smarter about our growth as societies. We need to figure out ways to work with nature and stop trying to defeat it all the time. Because when we play that game, nature always seems to win in the long run.

There's a quote similar to this from one of my favorite books, We Wish to Inform You. The book is about the Rwandan genocide (depressing topic, but wonderful and wonderfully written book), and in the intro, the author talks about a conversation that he had with a pygmy in a bar in Rwanda while doing research. It doesn't fit as well as I had hoped into this post but it took me about 30 minutes to find, so I wanted to share it anyway:

“Humanity’s struggle to conquer nature," the pygmy said fondly. “It is the only hope. It is the only way for peace and reconciliation—all humanity one against nature.”

He sat back in his chair, with his arms crossed over his chest, and went silent.

After a while, I said, “But humanity is a part of nature, too.”

“Exactly,” the pygmy said. “This is exactly the problem.”