9 months later & it was sobering
From the grounds of James A. Gomez elementary I looked at the plant in the gutter that drains to the underground cistern and looked at the waterway running, maybe a ghut, through the property that helps drain it, and thought what great examples of green infrastructure. Across the way I could see one of two Superfund sites on St. Thomas, and above I could see the Tutu High Rise housing community. Hurricane Irma hit the US Virgin Islands on September 6th, 2017 with category 5 winds. Opened in 1974, its’ residents occupy 398 dwelling units that sit high above sea level.
As information slowly flowed from the USVI, a video circulated on social media with residents of this community. Walls were gone and people were living without them. Their belongings piled high outside, scattered everywhere beneath the remaining roof. Peter Bailey penned a piece in the NY Times saying, “A former classmate of mine who lived in Tutu High Rise, one of St. Thomas’s largest public housing developments but now a hollow shell, had been sucked out of her window and smashed to death by Hurricane Irma.”
On Saturday June 16th, 2018 a resident of the area stopped to talk with a group of us. Colleagues from the University of the Virgin Islands (Dr. Kim Waddell from VI Epscor and Dr. Greg Guanel from the Caribbean Green Technology Center) were showing us the island after two days of hosting a hazard mitigation workshop to better prepare the next USVI Hazard Mitigation Plan which is necessary if one wishes funding from the US Federal Emergency Management Authority. We stood infront of this building and stared at the shell, still filled with everything except the people. The resident wanted us to know that the community wants to return to this comfortable space and would like it to be rehabilitated with smaller and better windows like the newer housing authority projects. She pointed out that the foundation was structurally solid and an architect with us agreed
In the distance I could see remnants of a solar PV plant. Its’ deforested footprint on the mountainous landscape obvious. In 2015 I had attended a Caribbean Clean Energy Summit in the USVI. Back then Vice President Biden, a home owner in the USVI, was engaged with Caribbean leaders on clean and renewable energy. Natural gas (not considered renewable) was the rage and Puerto Rico was sending a line to the USVI. We actually got a tour of that PV plant and other facilities managed by the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (VI WAPA). I made a video about that visit with VI WAPA engineers describing the system.
When I visited the site after the hurricanes, panels were everywhere and I was told that the privately owned plant will likely be taken to court by nearby residents as the panels became projectiles during the hurricane, piercing roofs. Some persons were harvesting screws from the bases. The panels were strewn across the landscape with no evidence of clean up. Waiting for the next storm to go airborne again or the next rain to start leaching trace metals into the soils. With all of the pictures on the web showing the plant, it is surprising that a February 2018 Congressional Research Service for the USVI says, “Limited information is available on the status of the solar facilities after the hurricanes, although the AES Distributed Energy site at Estate Donoe on St. Thomas was reported to be damaged after Hurricane Irma”. One would hope the solar industry had a better plan for panels and that more hurricane simulations can be integrated into project plans same way USF’s CAMLS medical simulation training center does for surgical teams prior to operation. Or that the designers of these systems would consider examples from Cuba where we heard that the panels are removed prior to an approaching storm and taken indoors where they survived and were reinstalled within days after the hurricanes.
While the Estate Donoe PV farm is inoperable to date, many rooftop solar systems could be seen across the island and some of my colleagues mentioned that their houses were off grid and they were back up with electricity and water right after the storm. There have been no initiatives to combine residential rooftop PV with roof upgrades as a a part of recovery efforts or funding. The USVI will replace its critical electric lines underground to reduce damage from fallen utility poles and trees. Out of sight out of mind has been the usual lament for insufficient funding for water and wastewater pipelines with some Caribbean islands dealing with over 50% losses due to leakage. Imagine with the higher rates paid for electricity by consumers, this lack of budget allocation for maintenance will not be a problem.
Three days prior, on June 13th, 2018 Dr. Kristin Wilson-Grimes from UVI’s marine sciences program took my USF colleague Dr. Qiong (Jane) Zhang and I on a tour of this watershed. Dr. Kristin Wilson-Grimes is a co-PI on a new grant, Collaborative NRT-INFEWS: Systems Training for Research ON Geography-based Coastal Food Energy Water Systems (STRONG-CFEWS. One of her research sites is a part of the St. Thomas East End Reserve (STEER), a Marine Protected Area (MPA) “designed to protect the system of coastal resources including mangroves, seagrass beds, coral reef communities and other critical marine habitats.” According to Kristin, this area has the largest mangrove forest in St. Thomas. As we turned down the road to see the mangroves and her groundwater monitoring wells, the Bovoni landfill — manages all of the solid waste from St. John and St. Thomas, loomed large to our right. Piles of cars, tires, building materials, white waste (fridges and other appliances) at its base. We discussed her work on the potential impact of landfill leachate on the protected areas.
We got to the sign for the wastewater treatment plant and rather than turn around, we entered. The beauty about interdisciplinary teams is demystifying our infrastructure, whether it’s the mangroves as Kristin did for us or the wastewater plant as the operators, Jane & I did for her.
Commissioned in 2002, the Mangrove Lagoon Treatment Plant, was designed to treat 0.7 Million Gallons per day (MGD) of effluent. According to one of the three staff, though originally designed to be fully automated they manage everything manually today. Wastewater entering the plant gets screened for objects that are not supposed to be thrown in the toilet (see an AD from the Barbados Water Authority on this) and then sent to a reactor where microbes eat the organic matter in the sewage, followed by a settling and decanting of liquid effluent which is chlorinated and discharged from the plant. The solid waste remaining, sludge, gets sent to a belt press that sends the liquid waste back to the reactors and buries the solids in the landfill. Three Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBRs) were installed for the sewage plant in addition to some smaller units to pre-treat septic tank effluent and now landfill leachate. A small patch of watermelon lay close by, no more irrigated by treated effluent since the leachate arrived. Operator intuition.
The plant was squeaky clean, the 3 staff extremely knowledgeable and one was working on obtaining wastewater operator certification. They were wary, however, that the roof of the building was destroyed and the leaks from above could damage what remained of their office and laboratory. No blue roof was given here. I taught a class in 2015 called “Reclaim Is” for which students from UVI produced a documentary featuring the 4 MGD Veolia run Red Point Wastewater Treatment Facility in St. Thomas. Incidentally, that company has recently had payment challenges with the USVI government and a June 15th, 2018 press release states, “today this plant is now being managed by the Virgin Islands Waste Management Authority (VIWAMA).”
Jane and I travelled on a brand new ferry to St. John that afternoon with Dr. Antoinette Jackson, an associate professor in USF’s Anthropology department. She served as the ethnographer for the South East region of the US National Parks Service, one of the largest land owners on St. John. This was Jane’s first trip to the Caribbean and as she asked me what “that” was on a coconut tree, I realized that my colleagues need to travel with me more often. The coconut tree is a wonder of the world. We drank fresh coconut water, ate the jelly, and left the house loaded with herbs like lemongrass and oregano. Each morning Jane would comment on how good the tea was.
Houses in the USVI are built with large cisterns underneath them. While in Florida a Hillsborough county resident can enroll in a rainwater harvesting class and receive a 55 gallon rainwater barrel to connect to gutters, in the USVI they store thousands of gallons of water. Many people commented that after the hurricanes they did not have a pump to access the cistern and that the hurricane debris contaminated the cistern. Growing up in Guyana with low pressure in pipes and no water in pipes, coupled with terrible water quality, meant I knew how to fill a bucket from a standpipe and lift it into the bathroom — wisdom now says we should have made an outdoor, light efficient bathroom and done the story. And to let it settle, and filter with cloth prior to boiling. While the metal door that opens from inside this house to the cistern was heavy, there were external pipes that allowed one to access the water. For anyone who experienced a category 5 hurricane and as an environmental engineer, designing and implementing more resilient cistern systems are ripe for innovations.
Participating for two days in a Hazard Mitigation Workshop led by VI EPSCOR and the Caribbean Green Technology Center at the University of the Virgin Islands, I realized I’ve never been engaged with this in my own city. Accepting FEMA money does require a 25% match from the state. It does beg the question that if a state needs a billion dollars to recover from a disaster, does it have the $250 million stashed for the match? If citizens were engaged with decision making processes, what would they spend $250 million dollars on to mitigate against hazards and reduce the need for a $750 million dollar intervention? Would states/territories that believe climate change is real and that have invested in initiatives to mitigate and adapt, want to continue funding FEMA and therefore other places with leaders who deny climate change and who have not invested in either mitigation or adaptation measures?
My colleagues in the Virgin Islands facilitated an impressive workshop with a diverse group of participants and presenters, including perspectives from other Caribbean islands whose geography and culture are closer than that of “stateside”. “Stateside” folks spoke about harnessing big data to better prepare for relief efforts (and the need for the collection and release of information from places like hospitals), NIST building standards (and the need for island based design and testing), naval operations research at the water-energy nexus (and the fact that one non functioning generator could be the bottleneck for water provision), and the importance of building up NGOs and community organizations. Many local persons emphasized the importance of community, the need to holistically address access to the schools (some had been turned into dumping grounds for debris) and provision of mental health services.
During breakout sessions I got to hear professionals speak of their experience during and immediately after the storm. On the first evening on island, Dr. Wayne Archibald, a friend and ex head of the Green Technology Center at UVI shared his experience of the storm with us over dinner. His young son letting us know what the grocery store lines and limits felt like. My eyes got watery as I very briefly chatted with Dr. Sandra Romano, the UVI Dean of the College of Science, and she responded to my question asking “how are things?” In May one of her faculty members and a colleague on one of our NSF grants, Dr. Marilyn Brandt presented at USF’s College of Marine Sciences. Her talk, “The lesser of two evils: comparing the impact of catastrophic events on coral reefs of the US Virgin Islands,” also made me tear up. Watching pictures in a powerpoint pale in comparison to seeing a place in person. I had followed the hurricanes as they impacted the region, donated, and watched many friends from the Virgin Islands organize relief efforts. Roads are clear, water is running, electricity seems to be back on, but there is a quietness and a cautiousness. The 2018 hurricane season is here.
On the last night we walked to a nearby restaurant. The food choices were many and we ate there, one ear in the conversation at the table and the other on the TV screen. A community of elderly men from the VI and us, watching Jaws and screaming at everything. At the end of his piece from October 2017, “Has America Forgotten the Virgin Islands,” Peter Bailey writes, “Military personnel have finally started to reach the island to help in the recovery. Some jog past our house in the mornings since we live close to the National Guard armory. My mother enjoys waving to them as they pass, but reminds me that our true heroes are those most familiar to us: “Son,” she says, “we’ve been taking care of each other just fine and we’ll continue to.”
A friend introduced me to Peter Bailey via social media when I was in St. Thomas. He was not on island and is currently producing a series of documentaries of the impacts of the 2017 hurricanes on Caribbean communities. The first, “Paradise Discovered: The Anguilla Connection,” premiers in Anguilla in July.
After watching it I messaged him that I wish he had been at our workshop as I think his work is needed to let people tell their stories as a way to support wellbeing/wellness. I promised to link him with the workshop participants as it very much ties in with mental health. His next film in the series features high school students in the US Virgin Islands. With rumors that some schools have lost 50% of their population to “stateside” and doubts that they will return, and with debate over where and how to rebuild schools, I hope that these young people are allowed to design their future. Looking out over Magen’s Bay on a day when no cruise ships were visiting, a golf course can be seen higher in the watershed. It is closing down. That seems like a prime location for an A rated school in the Virgin Islands committed to educating students from places like Estate Tutu and sheltering them during the next storm. If my VI friends and their friends read this piece and get this far, they would know that they have the strength and the connections to do this.
Thanks to Drs. Wayne Archibald, Kriston Wilson Grimes, Greg Guanel, and Kim Waddell for taking my UVI colleagues and I around St. Thomas. Kudos to Greg, Kim, and USF colleagues like Provost Camille McKayle for facilitating the Virgin Islands Hazard Mitigation Planning workshop and for allowing us to participate.
