PUBLIC HEALTH authorities in St. Catherine are declaring the Rio Cobre a health hazard. Diseases such as gastroenteritis are on the increase in the parish because of the pollution of the river. A growing number of people who live in the vicinity of the Rio Cobre are being treated at health centres in the parish after drinking river water without boiling it first. According to the Chief Public Health Inspector for the parish, Samuel Cameron, the river is the only source of water for many residents.
The pollution of the Rio Cobre and other rivers in Jamaica has been a cause of concern for some time. Both businesses and residents themselves in the vicinity of rivers are inclined to treat them as inexhaustible natural sewers. The problem of river pollution is not only a Jamaican one. Many much larger rivers than the Rio Cobre or anything in Jamaica have been polluted to death, their waters becoming so toxic from waste inflows that no organism can live in them.
The people drinking directly from the Rio Cobre are in all probability doing so because they cannot access the services of the NWC in providing treated water. It should not escape the health authorities that the same poverty which precludes the purchase of treated piped water will make it difficult to secure fuel for boiling river water. Turning to firewood harvested from the watershed poses another environmental hazard, and, in any case, is another labour to perform.
The health and environment authorities have enough legal clout to pursue and prosecute polluters and should proceed to do so. The question of the safety of water extracted from polluted rivers even after treatment also arises. Tough environmental regulations and policing in other countries have restored the health of many polluted rivers. The rivers and people of Jamaica must be protected from the kind of pollution which has rendered rivers dead in other places.
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