April 24th, 2019
BVI Traveller was on Tortola in March and noticed more barges been loaded with scraps of metal and crushed cars from the Pockwood Pond and Cox Heath dumps.
The BVI Department of Waste Management had been collecting metal waste since Irma and Maria and shipping it out of the territory. In October, 2018 the Department of Waste Management reported it had collected more than 3000 derelict cars since November 2017 and over 12,000 tons of scrap metal at the Cox Heath waste site.
The recent activity was confirmed by an April 12,2019 article in BVI Platinum News which stated, “Approximately 1700 tons of scrap metal—which included 600 derelict vehicles—was exported from the Territory to Columbia for the purpose of recycling in March. This disclosure comes even as 180 other vehicles were collected and removed from Virgin Gorda last week, as clean-up efforts continue through the Recovery and Development Agency (RDA) and the Department of Waste Management.”
Glad to see the cleanup is on-going!
Photo courtesy John Fischetti.
BVI Traveller was created in September of 2017 to help tourism in the British Virgin Islands recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma.
To that end, we met our goals. In the past 7 years there have been over 1.2 million visits to the website and over 3 million pages have been viewed. There are over 1,000 pages on the site featuring news posts and detailed listings on all hotels, villas, restaurants and sailing charters located in the BVI. The BVI Government and many business, hotels, villas and sailing charters have all agreed that the site “moved the needle on tourism” after Irma.
The site, however, has run its course. It has served its purpose by bringing visitors and local businesses together to rebuild the tourist industry and it is now time to shut down operations for good.
I want to thank everyone for your help and support.
Chuck Metter