Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie and Anthony Greenway | Rio Cobre: More effective environmental monitoring needed

Following the major pollution incident in the Rio Cobre in July 2022, the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) decided to investigate the efficacy of the environmental water-quality monitoring conducted by the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI) and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA).

The review focused on water-quality data collected since 2010 in the vicinity of the WINDALCO Ewarton bauxite-alumina processing facility. Since none of the environmental monitoring data were readily available to the public, Access to Information Act (ATI) requests were submitted to the NEPA. Our review demonstrates that both entities have been ineffective in their environmental monitoring of WINDALCO and do not seem to be seeking, let alone effecting, adequate solutions to the pollution of the Rio Cobre.

REQUEST FOR DATA

Responsibility for environmental management and monitoring of the bauxite-alumina industry was delegated to the JBI in 1994 (revised again in 2013) through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the JBI and the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA). The NRCA reserves the right to independently monitor and investigate environmental complaints after consultation with the JBI. The JBI is responsible for preparing quarterly and annual reports as per the MoU, which are then submitted to the NEPA for review and action as necessary.

In partial fulfilment of the ATI requests made in September 2022, the JET received several of the JBI’s quarterly and annual environmental monitoring reports of the bauxite-alumina industry in November 2022. The quarterly reports present meteorological, air, and water quality monitoring data and information on environmental incidents for all bauxite- alumina companies operating in Jamaica. The JBI’s annual reports combine the data and information from the relevant quarterly reports and include discussions of perceived dominant trends.

Despite our data request for the period 2010-2022, the JET received only six of the possible 11 annual reports and 27 of the possible 44 quarterly reports prepared by the JBI. Reports for 2010 and 2022 were not included. Annual reports for 2016-2019, the quarterly reports for 2019 and the NEPA’s routine monitoring data and the JBI’s data for the period were in hand, however, through previous ATI requests.

FINDINGS

The JET’s review, which focused on the water quality (WQ) data for the Rio Cobre, highlights several important issues, which are summarised here:

• Environmental data are not proactively disseminated or readily available to the public and ATI requests do not guarantee a partial or full response, especially not in the legal time frame. Environmental data is a public-interest matter, and the public should be able to access it easily.

• The reports and data do not identify the locations of all sampling sites with georeferencing. There are multiple sample locations identified only by name and a short description. This makes it very difficult to assess the suitability of the monitoring programme.

• The majority of data presented in the reports are quarterly or annual averages. Averages hide short-term pollution episodes and are not useful for in-depth analysis.

• There has been inadequate reported water sampling by the JBI in response to the environmental incidents identified in the reports.

• Verification sampling is necessary to check for agreement of the results obtained by the involved laboratories. The JBI’s required verification sampling has seldom been done, and when done, the data are not fit for the purpose.

• It is not clear if the NEPA does its own independent assessment of the data, but the NEPA’s routine monitoring data do not complement the JBI’s monitoring programme to any useful extent.

• Several sections of the annual and quarterly reports show very little variation from report to report. Significantly, the specific environmental concerns of the JBI have remained the same since 2011, suggesting that there has been no effective action to address these concerns. If concerns in 2021 are the same as they were in 2011, one can only conclude that the monitoring programme has failed to bring about improvement in water quality.

• The analysis of the water quality data by the JBI is at best superficial and often absent or incomplete.

SEVERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

These findings were accompanied by several recommendations and submitted to the JBI and the NEPA. The report was also shared with Floyd Green, minister of agriculture, fisheries and mining, and Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. We received a consolidated response from the NEPA and the Water Resources Authority (WRA) over the signature of Senator Samuda, which, in turn, generated a new set of questions.

The response included this statement: ‘The contamination of the Rio Cobre as a result of the bauxite and alumina production over the past 60 years has been well researched and documented in scholarly publications.” Why then has the contamination been allowed to continue?

The response also stated that the NEPA’s water-management programme is the same across watersheds and not targeted at any single industry but “seeks to capture the general ambient state of the watershed”. Rivers and their watersheds are affected differently, and as such, the monitoring programme in each should be designed to assess the impact of the activities in the specific watershed.

MUCH IMPROVEMENT NEEDED

The monitoring that has been undertaken to date by the JBI with the NEPA’s oversight has had little value in protecting the Rio Cobre. In general, the monitoring of the bauxite-alumina industry must be significantly improved and focused on effecting solutions to pollution incidents. Finally, all environmental information should be proactively disclosed in order to engage and inform the public. The JET’s full report can be found on its website.

Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie, PhD, is an environmental scientist and the CEO of the Jamaica Environment Trust. Anthony Greenaway, PhD, a laboratory management and data (chemical/environmental) interpretation consultant, recently retired from The University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to jamaicaenvironmenttrust@gmail.com.