Following the recent massive arrivals of sargassum in Cul-de-Sac and its health impacts, the Anti-Sargassum Collective takes stock with the Community in terms of communication and action plan.
With a rapid response welcomed by the Anti-Sargassum Collective, the Community of Saint-Martin via the Living Environment delegation expressed itself regarding the actions put in place to limit the impacts relating to the next arrivals of sargassum on the territory. On the issue of direct disposal of algae, the COM specifies “that it is indeed not the method that we recommend, nor does the Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) , given that the evacuated products are in fact saturated with sea water. In this sense, truck rotations lose their real usefulness. On another level, it is important to remember that landfilling is expensive and that it is, for the Community, unacceptable to finance the landfilling of volumes of seawater.” The representatives of the Community are nevertheless aware of the concern for evacuation when the sargassum strandings are particularly massive, like last August 14. The priority is therefore divided into two phases: collection to prevent the decomposition of sargassum from starting at sea, a situation that we have experienced in the past and which makes collection extremely difficult, long and laborious. Then, evacuation to the landfill. According to the COM, the delays between phase 1 and phase 2 can lead to storage that exceeds 72 hours and therefore cause the start of decomposition and release of H2S. Last week, the resources dedicated to evacuation were reinforced to help resolve the situation as quickly as possible. The Community adds that in terms of perfectibility, and for the benefit of experiences, it appears important "during exceptional strandings and within the limits of the constantly increasing means deployed by the public authorities that we can both collect at sea the most as quickly as possible and reduce the evacuation time. The project for two experimental dams at Cul-de-Sac and in front of the Etang aux Poissons is still current, a third version of the market should be published soon. _VX
https://faxinfo.fr/en/sargasses-la-collectivite-sexprime/
