‘The Threats to Our Marine Environment – a Ten-Year Study by SOS Jersey, Demonstrating the Urgent Need for Independent Environmental Regulation.’
Jersey faces enormous pressures on its marine environment and in particular faces a legacy of bad practices in the disposal of toxic waste in previous decades. This waste, containing harmful Bellozanne incinerator ash and asbestos, has more recently been buried in lined pits at La Collette, but originally was randomly spread directly on the beach which now lies under the Waterfront.
This practice has come back to bite us and our shellfish, in particular, are now being affected by heavy metals either leaching from under the older ash pits at La Collette or being taken to sea by the tidal flow under the Waterfront. This pollution is often ‘accelerated’ by new construction in tidal areas.
In the report, which covers their work over 20 years, SOSJ also examine all the threats to Jersey’s marine environment and how these can be mitigated by increasing political awareness of its importance to islanders health and wellbeing, both physically and economically, therefore accepting that extra funding is vitally necessary to protect this critical area.
Most important of all, SOS Jersey recommends the urgent appointment of an Independent Environmental Regulator. This will take the pressure of the Environment Department (whose officers are very stretched) and supply the necessary safeguards, currently absent, particularly with regard to further development on the Waterfront.