Belize City Council Plans Quick Response to Sargassum Crisis

A seasonal nuisance has become a growing problem for Belize City. Massive amounts of sargassum have washed ashore in recent weeks, blanketing sections of the coastline and raising concerns about foul odors, environmental damage, and public health. City officials say the volume is unlike anything they have dealt with before, prompting urgent discussions on how to remove and properly dispose of the seaweed. Today, Mayor Bernard Wagner told News Five that the council is working closely with the Department of the Environment to tackle the issue before it gets worse.

 

Bernard Wagner, Belize City Mayor

“We have a current problem right now, but how will we address it in the next, in the short term, medium term, and long term going forward? And so that meeting essentially was a brainstorming session. And we also wanted to see how we could immediately do some level of cleaning up and get to mitigation efforts rather than planning too long in the future, but look at how we need to get on the ground immediately. Because it’s not just a local problem. This is a national, national problem as well.”

 

Britney Gordon

“So what were the resolutions that you guys came to  immediately handle it?”

 

Bernard Wagner

“We had our city planner as well as our engineer, Floyd Williams, and along with our works director, they were to go on the ground and essentially see the extent of the inflows and come up with a plan of how we get those inflows out of the city in the short term. What will we utilize, what kind of equipment will we utilize to begin to get it out? It’s a environmental and health issue, as you may know, and so we wanted to act quickly, and that is why they are on the ground, and they will be reporting back to us as to, to how what level of machinery we’ll need trucks we will need. I know that my CEMO coordinator, Ms. Melanie, was on the phone this afternoon with the DOE to see where we would dispose of those sargassum, and they had indicated to her that the facility the waste management facility is the best facility for disposal.”

 

According to Wagner, the council’s goal is to move quickly from planning to mitigation, clearing the shoreline before the problem worsens.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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