And from mangroves in the Belize District to Stann Creek and coastal erosion in Placencia.
In the past we've reported on the erosion that has plagued the southern shores over the past few years, but tonight the Placencia community's concerns are growing as it relates to the unauthorized construction of rock walls along the Placencia Beaches.
Developers have resorted to erecting these barriers to contain their beaches and counter the relentless forces of erosion, but the issue of permits has come under scrutiny recently. One Particular structure, going up on Turtle Inn's Beach has raised some concern. We Spoke with resident and environmentalist, Lisa Carne about this issue.
Lisa Carne, Fragments of Hope
"I think that based on the workshop and the voices raised there, I think the first thing that we would like to see on this peninsula is that all of the structures are removed, full stop, meaning from the marina up the north going south, just get rid of all the artificial structures."
"The problem is I don't know, I personally don't know the best way to do that. So an analogy I gave today is when you have a ship grounding on the reef, oftentimes when they remove that ship, they do more harm to the reef than the actual grounding did."
"You understand what I'm saying? So and so I think the first thing that people would like to see is that everything is halted right now and put to a stop, stop moving things around, take away the artificial structures on the eastern side of the peninsula and stop mining the rivers, because prior to all of these interventions, we had a natural ebb and flow of our coastline with natural accretion from the rivers and different weather patterns here, right?"
"But it wasn't until people started putting in all these things out there that everything got messed up all the way going down and then each person is scrambling to save their property line, right Because it's disappearing."
"So that's the only answer that collectively I heard was that we wish and we hope that every artificial structure could be removed in the most environmentally friendly way, you know, I've heard people talking about dynamite in the marina."
"I'm not condoning that, but that doesn't sound wise to me, right? But I'm not sure how the best way to be removing all this artificial stuff would go. But at the same time, if you don't stop mining the rivers, you're still not going to have any natural accretion of sediments coming down the coast."
"Does that make sense?"
We reached out to the manager of the property today but were informed that he is out of the country. We will continue to make efforts to get his side of the story.
