Each year on this date, authorities meet in the park and give speeches in Spanish lauding the initiative of General José Santos Guardiola, who in fact was just doing as the Americans had told him.

I was saddened to see that no speeches were made in English that alluded to the recognition of the early British settlers from Belize, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. But this was no fault of the Central Government as much as it is the ever-increasing indifference of Bay Islanders to their own history, environment, and future. It’s an ominous sign of the almost complete Honduranization of the islands.

In 1989, I was accompanying British Historian and Professor Michael Duncan to St. Helene on a fact-finding mission while he was working on his paper for the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. He was a fascinating man who passed away shortly after his paper The Gentle Art of Cutting the painter was published in 1990. In this paper, he shared some prophetic and frankly quite alarming thought:

In regards tourism, I was told privately by an Honduran official that they have now discovered the Bay Islands to be a goose that can lay golden eggs, but by the time they get visitors, they may have destroyed its customs and much of what made it special. There is also, at the same time, a persistent feeling in some Honduran circles that the Bay Islands should, at last, be assimilated linguistically, culturally and commercially (ie: Honduranized).

They have now discovered the Bay Islands to be a goose that can lay golden eggs.

If you take this in context, it was written before the main road was paved from Oak Ridge to French Harbour, before the international airport was built, before RECO, way before cruise ships, and before the development boom (which began around 1995). There were only a handful of Hotels welcoming international visitors in the Bay Islands: Bayman Bay in Guanaja, CoCo view, and Anthony’s Key, to name a few.

The population of the entire Bay Islands was 25,000, and the economy at this time was still based entirely on commercial fishing and Remittances from Islanders working as merchant seamen overseas. If someone was to suggest publicly at the time that Bay Islanders would have their culture slowly replaced after it dwindled away, and that favorite family recreational areas like the Pigeon Cays destroyed beyond repair, it would be considered dystopian. As a matter of fact, Michael Duncan’s words and the unnamed official’s prediction have eerily become our reality.

It is true we live in the most prosperous time in Bay Islands History, due to development and tourism, but we should ask ourselves if it is sustainable How long will it take before the hillsides, reefs, and water resources collapse, without adequate environmental oversight and impartial enforcement of the environmental laws? How long will it be before Anglo-Caribbean and Creole cultures drift into the past and are forgotten? Federal environmental laws are in place, however those hired to implement them are mainlanders with no vested interest in long-term environmental management and sustainability. The same applies with the police force who are all mainlanders and have no interest nor dedication to solving crimes or keeping the laws, because it is not their home and they are rotated out regularly.

RECO’s Newest $41 Million Investment Raises Questions and Concerns

RECO was founded in 1992 by island investors and in 2008 it was purchased by Kelcy Warren, a US billionaire ranked by Bloomberg to be the 410th richest man in the world. RECO and Roatan are a source of income for Warren who made his fortune in oil and gas pipelines. Warren also uses RECO for profitable loans, and used RECO to run a power cable to his private island of Barberetta.

Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, went from $1.7 Billion in 2016 to $6.8 billion in 2024, tripling his fortune in the last eight years.

While to the untrained eye RECO has grown in size. More accurately RECO has become a motley crew of 1990s wind turbines, island prime land destroyed for solar farms, and other potentially wrong decisions.

Ill-conceived RECO decisions have unintended consequences.

Now instead of adding another set of Wasilla LPG powered generators, RECO is adding different company generators and is not investing sufficiently in already stressed distribution system. Those decisions will not only increase energy bills of islanders, it could translate to more unstable power supply and more expense to consumers in order to remedy that.

The $41 million RECO project will consist of three propane powered Medium-speed commercial marine gas engines B36:45V by Bergen. The company awarded the contract is Sampol based in Mayorca, Spain. “Sampol designs, constructs, maintains highly efficient energy plants,” said Josu Vicandi, representing Sampol, a 90-year-old family business. “We expect to have the [RECO] system installed and working by September 2025.” The company has delivered similar projects to the Caribbean before. In January 2023, Bergen Engines and Sampol were selected for a similar project in Puerto Rico where Sampol is installing four 3.3 MW medium-speed units B36:45L Bergen Engines.

Things get complicated here. There is an issue of incompatibility between the existing Wartsila generator operating system and the new Bergen generators which have their own energy management and operating system. This issue could potentially translate into black-outs and extra costs, etc. Instead of having spare parts and components for just Wartsila generators, now RECO will have to keep a second completely different inventory for Bergen generators. “It doesn’t make good business sense to keep separate inventories for different engine manufacturers on the books. Also RECO mechanics will have to go through a whole new training cycle to familiarize themselves with Bergen, a process which took them two years with the LPG fired engines,” said Mathew Harper, RECO’s former Director of Operations.

Another not addressed issue in the $41 million upgrade is the investment in distribution infrastructure, and upgrading existing RECO cables that are already carrying high loads. RECO’s mistakes translate into more than just high energy bills for the island consumers. On March 22, a pregnant woman was killed, electrocuted by a falling, poorly installed high tension RECO wire in French Harbour. All ill-conceived RECO decisions have unintended consequences.

Spending $41 million to get 25.2 Megawatt translates to $1.6 million per Megawatt, a higher than average capital cost for LPG power. Now, if RECO has overpaid for the installation of generating capacity, this has a direct effect of how much RECO consumers will pay in their electric bills. It means that RECO customers will have to pay so much more, at double-digit-interest, to pay off the loan to Kelcy Warren.

Currently RECO has the generating capacity of 44.7 Megawatts. RECO’s LPG gas power plant is rated at 28 MW. The company also operates a windward rated at 3.9 MW and two solar plants rated at 12 MW. Its deep cycle battery system BESS has 11 MW. The new gas powered Bergen generators should increase that capacity by 25.2 Megawatt to a total of 70 MW.

While RECO has been presenting its energy sources as “clean,” things are much more complicated. The RECO investments have been a mixed bag of XXI century efficient gas technology, mistakes and ecological disasters. The 26 wind turbines on Brass Hill have been purchased used and is old, inefficient 1980s technology never coming close to generating its advertised 150 Kilowatts per turbine.

Since the wind farm project opened in 2017 there is a constant, disturbing whining sound caused by moving propellers of the wind turbines in Brass Hill and Corozal. This not only lowers quality of life for many Corozalians, but it lowers property values in Brass Hill itself.

There is another effect on the environment. Both migrating birds and local birds are killed by moving blades of RECO’s wind turbines. The scale of the bird killing has not been assessed by any island organization, but studies in the US have shown that an average wind turbine there kills between four and 18 birds per year. So in rough estimate RECO’s 26 wind turbines kill between 100 and 468 birds a year.

While RECO’s solar panels are advertised as “eco” they are far from that. There is not much “clean” about RECO’s two solar projects either. Hundreds of trees were cut down, hills were moved, topsoil of prime and scarce land was destroyed to create a desert of ugly solar panels.

Another issue is what happens to RECO solar and wind infrastructure when a Hurricane hits. Hurricanes serve as an added risk to destroying wind turbines and solar panels on an island like Roatan. High velocity winds and flying debris is likely to cause damage, and perhaps a completely destroy these installations.

Bay Islands Attorneys Vote

The favorite to win was the Patria y Justicia [Fatherland and Justice] movement, headed by Gustavo Solórzano. “He is a personal friend of mine, we were classmates in Law School,” said Alejandro Tugliani, who ran on the FJ ticket in Roatan. “There are two philosophies – the collective interest of the chapter and personal interest of everybody. I represent the collectivity.”

The vote followed the February 3 internal vote within the movement. “Two years ago it was more friendly, this was more hostile,” remembers Tugliani. “I think the other side is a bit self-motivated. (…) There was a lot of political interference.”

CAH is a political entity, as it proposes 15 candidates for the Honduran Supreme court every seven years. The CAH’s power to appoint candidates for the Supreme Court then has tremendous command, as the Supreme Court appoints nine appellate judges, 66 first instance courts, and 325 justices of the peace. “Some people [within CAH] have political motivations,” said Tugliani.

The CAH Roatan began in 2012 and there are currently around 250 attorneys in the Roatan CAH. “We are a small chapter, but strong,” said Paula Bonilla, running as second vocal in the Vindicator Democratic Front.

Officially, four movements took part in the primaries and three of them formed an informal coalition under the Frente Reivindicador Democrático [FRD] umbrella. “We started late, but we have them sweating,” said Paula Bonilla. “We are winners. That is our joy, that is our pride.”

Two years ago it was more friendly, this was more hostile.

“I worked at the supreme court of justice for 12 years,” said Breisy Banegas, who has been residing on Roatan for two-and-a-half-years. “Now I am “Juez de Letras” in the Bay Islands.”

The winner needed 50% of the votes plus one. After the voting closed at 5 p.m., the votes reflected 129 cast for Alejandro Tugliani and 58 for Breisy Banegas. “Ever attorney who was on Roatan did vote,” said Tugliani. “I am very happy that we inspired everybody to come,” said Tugliani.

In the national elections, Gustavo Solórzano ended up winning. His competitor, Karla Alegria, national leader of the FRD came in second. She was offered the position as vice president.

After just 12 years of existence, the CAH Roatan chapter is gaining influence at the national level. Bay Islands is a place where big real estate deals are done, and some sizable companies on a national scale are based: RECO, BIP, Galaxy Wave, and Sun Corporation to name a few.

A New Roads Should Create New Opportunities

Ten or fifteen years ago, the Roatan Municipality’s budget was not sufficient for such an ambitious project. Now, with an annual municipal income of over $10 million, the municipality has been able to embark on larger scale projects. “We have been making roads for about five to six years now, so everyone knew that this was going to happen at one point,” says Ing. Ricardo Castillo, infrastructure chief of the Roatan Municipality.

This summer, the municipality is focused on the Sandy Bay road building. Employing 120 road construction workers, the 8.3 km project − which began on September 20, 2022 in Sandy Bay − is expected to be completed in October 2023.

The nine meter wide road will contain two three and a half meter lanes and a one meter lane for walking or cycling. Using state of the art 5200 PSI concrete, the road is expected to last for thirty years.

The road’s most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key. By the end of June, the Municipality was 1.2 kilometers away from West End with the dirt work.

“A proper asphalt road should last 15 to 20 years without any maintenance,” said Castillo. Islanders got nearly double that lifespan out of their Sandy Bay road, which was originally built in the 1980s. Despite numerous repairs and emergency measures, the road survived nearly 40 years. Since 2010, funds have been available for pothole repairs and maintenance to prevent the road from deteriorating.

Most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key.

White topping road around 500 culverts are planned to be installed in the Mud Hole to West End. “We make them bigger, we stabilize the area around them,” says Ing. Castillo. “We are taking everything that is less than 36 inches and putting brand new material.”

As the road widens, Roatan Electrical Company [RECO] moves electrical posts at their own expense, a process that started in 2018. “It gets a little bit rough, but in the end they do help us out,” says Ing. Castillo. A few RECO posts are waiting to be moved in Dixon Cove. Once that is done, the Municipal can finish sidewalks and cycling lanes in that area.

IDECA won the concrete paving contract for the road. Their winning bid came in at around 59 million Lps. ($2.4 million USD). The entirety of the project is estimated to cost the Municipality and the Roatan taxpayers Lps. 155 million ($6.3 million USD).

In the end, the road construction costs on the island are pretty competitive with road construction costs on the Honduran mainland. The key to that is doing the roadwork part of the road paving projects in house.

On the new and rebuilding road projects, the work is typically divided into two parts. The contractor does the concrete paving of the road, but beforehand, the Municipality constructs the earthwork, culvert, and gullies and sidewalks. They negotiate with property owners and easements, or access issues. “We give it a lot of attention, since we are from here,” says Ing. Castillo. “We don’t tend to buy land to build roads, but people tend to see how their property value could increase.”

According to Ing. Castillo, Roatan Municipality spends around Lps. 20 − Lps. 22 million per kilometer of road and, all costs included. “That, in the end, is the reason why we do what we do,” says Ing. Castillo. “We know the people, we know the work, and we know what to do. The neighbors usually try to help us out with the road construction.” That would not always be the case with a mainland company, whose employees don’t know or understand the island or its people.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt. There is a 2.3 kilometer road from Mud Hole to the KIX scheduled to follow in 2024. The most complex part will be the white topping of the PO-35, the 1.5 kilometer road from the KIX sporting complex to the Roatan Airport.

The 1.5 kilometer road was sent out to an outside company for design, as it is the most complex portion of the island’s main road system. “We want an over bridge and some big construction on the site,” said Ing. Castillo. The sewer and rain escapes are a big issue in the steep terrain of the road cutting across Coxen Hole between the airport and Calle Ocho. That is planned to be done in late 2024.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt.

There are some interesting features of the island’s revitalized road system. The Mud Hole intersection is to receive a traffic roundabout, the biggest one on the island. Coxen Hole center road will have three lanes of traffic, and the road will be reduced to two lanes around the KIX sporting complex on the north side of Coxen Hole.

There are more possibilities of roads the Municipality is looking at: a northern road that starts in West End, continues to Palmetto, climbs to Crawfish Rock, descends to the Pristine Bay roundabout, and connects to the Big Bight road and eventually ends at Plan Grande. All that is possible thanks to the heavy machinery that the Roatan Municipality owns. Municipality has begun dirt work on the old Palmetto to Tres Flores road. The paving for that portion is expected for 2024.

The municipality has gained much-needed experience in the road paving business. The stretch between Island Saloon and the oxidation pond was perhaps the most challenging earthwork in the process of rebuilding the municipality’s road system. The municipal was built in two months. “That was pretty hectic. We moved 1500 tons of dirt there,” said Ing. Castillo.

By the Madeyso store and by the Megaplaza mall the municipal had to move dirt out and replace it with rock to stabilize the road’s substrate. As much as 15 feet of dirt had to be moved and replaced.

Mathew Harper’s Book Debuts with ‘A Handful of Seashells’

Harper comes from a middle class family. In 1987, after two years of school in England he came across an advertisement in Daily Telegraph for a teaching position in Honduras. Harper turned down officers training course at the Royal Military Academy at Sand Hurst for a teaching position in Santa Helena island-a place with no electricity, and few people who could read or write.

While Santa Helena was no place to advance in British Military or society, it was a perfect place to study the complex, rugged characters as eccentric as the island itself. Back then Bay Islands and especially Santa Helena was a place stuck in a time vortex: full of colorful and eccentric individuals rugged as the sea that sustained them.

Today Harper is polishing his writing. Harper is fascinated by the tweaking of sentences of his stories until they become little masterpieces of sound and meaning. One of the most beautiful and insightful phrases in the book is where Harper describes his time on a remote beach on a Honduran fishing bank. “Being my mother’s son, I took a handful of colorful shells from the beach, selected the best, and put them in my pocket to remember that day in that most idyllic of places.”

Harper’s favorite writer is Earnest Hemmingway and like that American writer he paints Bay Islands full of colorful, gritty characters with their dilemmas and adventures. “What I enjoy about writing is painting word pictures,” said Harper.

Harper always liked the adventurous Ernest Hemingway and nostalgic James Joyce, eloquent Albert Camus and was fascinated by the reclusive Englishman James Hamilton Patterson. Harper himself is a character living a life of adventure and mentorship. After working at a seafood packing plant and at RECO (Roatan Electric Company) he has introduced the game of rugby to Honduras and he served as British Honorary Consul to the Bay Islands. He was eventually elected on the board of RECO and made his way up from a meter reader, studying and starting his own electrical company Green Hill Energy.

Now, after 35 years of living on the islands, Mathew Harper spends much of his time behind a desk in a sterile, white and air conditioned office. By day he is the operations manager at RECO and his work is often stressful. Writing has been a cantharis for Harper.

During the forced COVID lockdowns he found time to self-reflect and rewrite some stories he wrote down before. He was diagnosed with depression and found that one way of fighting it was to write and to edit older stories he had written down years ago, but put aside. This is how the idea for “A handful of Seashells” came about.

Then Harper decided to bite the bullet. He wrote at night and produced a collection of stories that capture the spirit of the Bay Islands and the souls that made them their home: simple, rugged people, eccentrics and desperados.

The stories featured in “A Handful of Seashells” are autobiographical in nature and follow Harper’s adventures in Saint Helena, Roatan and on Honduran fishing banks. His first story – “Dragon” is a story of a fishing trip he made alone on his father’s in law cut out paddle dory named Dragon.

Harper is fascinated by the tweaking of sentences of his stories until they become little masterpieces.

The story describes the stress of young fatherhood and effect of family bickering. Harper is wrestling not only with the dory, but with a dragon of his childhood dreams and youthful expectations. The story is melancholic and at moments harsh as a paper cuts. Especially as Harper describes his in-laws and their expectations of him. The author does that while painting a watercolor of 1990s Saint Helena and Barbareta.

Both Harper’s stories and his writing style are reminiscent of Jack London, He is often harsh describing his characters, but honest. He is in fact thoughtful and caring. He finds beauty and meaning in the most mundane parts of life. “A complex character like we all are coming to live here,” he described Adolf Ulrich, a German man from Breslau who moved to Saint Helene and married a local lady.

In his stories Mathew deals with the subject of seeking recognition and approval of his fellow men. One of them is a rough and awkward German man bent over by life and age. Harper tells a story of their encounters, competition and finally comradely. Ulrich first come to the Bay Islands when he worked on the treasure hunting boat called the Rambler that sunk just past Fort Cay in Port Royal.

While Harper is sometimes harsh with his depictions of characters; but he is also honest and sensitive. He is even honest with himself. He describes coming to the islands as a 22-year-old lad and then abandoning his respected profession to marry and lead meager existence spear fishing and cultivating cassava while supporting his wife.

“Gladiator” is the longest, central story of the book. It is story about Harpers trip to lobster fishing grounds. It is also a story about Harper’s final initiations into the ways islanders make a living and go about their lives: from husking and chipping coconuts to freediving. From a schoolteacher Harper had become the student of everyone and everything. He became “a public school boy from a good family who ended up in the middle of Spanish Caribbean hustling to make ends meet.”

The stories in “A Handful of Seashells” are stories that remind us what an adventure and a roller coaster life really is. We cannot plan things out and even as things settle in away, we least expect them to. Harper’s stories also remind us of the beauty that a simple, honest life can bring.

“A Handful of Seashells” is self-published by Harper with Gatekeeper Press. The publisher helped Harper with editing proofreading and laying out the book. The book is available on Amazon and ibooks and on Roatan at Waves of Art gallery.

Harper is not only a writer; he is a historian.
He has been promoting the understanding of Bay Islands history like few people have, in fact like no one had before in many ways.
As a member of the Royal Historical Society… He often requests scans of documents and books form the British National Archives. He studies books and documents written by explorers, archeologists, mapmakers.
A lot of information Harper found in wills and testaments.

Harper is working on second book now. His next book is about a history of the Bay Islands and focuses on the characters involved in shaping this archipelago in 1700s and 1800s. Harper is researching the life of Admiral Nelson who was active as a young Naval Lieutenant in Western Caribbean. He is also interested in Colonel McDonald, who booted the Spaniards out of Fort Cay in Roatan’s Port Royal.
Another character was Sarah Forrester, who lived and died on Barbareta. She was employed looking after the island owner’s land and investments.

Roatan’s Aquifer and Reef are at Risk from the Mismanaged Garbage Dump

The most impressive recycling operation on Roatan has not been set up by the local or central government, or by the nonprofit organization. The island’s biggest recycling operation is done seven days a week, 365 days a year, by around 120 people who work on and often live on the Roatan garbage dump. They separate and salvage metals, plastics and glass; they retrieve usable lumber, find old refrigerators and pass them on to recycling centers in Coxen Hole.

Their dignified, important work goes unnoticed and thankless. They also find themselves earning a living in the most toxic and dangerous environment on Roatan - the “temporary” Roatan Municipal garbage dump.

Maribel has sad eyes of a woman twice her age and her hands are wrinkled and covered with scars. She works without gloves so pieces of glass and metal often cut the skin of her small hands. It is late Sunday afternoon. She places bottles and containers of value into a four foot long transparent plastic bag.

The bag contains about thirty pieces of dirty, used, discardable containers most people see no value in. There are aluminum cans worth 80 Honduran centavos each, there are heavy plastic containers worth two Lempiras each and one glass coca cola bottle worth another two Lempiras.

If Maribel works hard and is lucky, she is able to buy milk for her two-year-old baby that lives with her and her parents, a hundred yards east of the garbage dump. If it is a bad day she might not even earn one hundred Lempiras.

There is an unwritten agreement that each recycler not take away, from a pile already collected. The Municipal dump is dotted with piles of old metal roofs, stacks of wooden pallets, bags of aluminum cans and heaps of rusting refrigerators and dishwashers. Nobody touches these piles but its rightful recycler and now owner. Honor system and gentlemen rules are a big part of recycling life in Mud Hole, Roatan.

Roatan Municipality employs three security guards at the garbage dump. Abiel Navarro has been a security man at the dump for seven years and makes sure nothing happens to the one key piece of equipment that moves trash and flattens the heap of trash. Navarro lives in a makeshift structure on the garbage dump itself. There are a dozen improvised mini houses on the site of the dump where people eat and sleep.

Despite the work of many devoted municipal employees the simple truth is that the local government is not competent enough to manage basic infrastructure projects. Roatan municipal government broke the desalination plant in Coxen Hole, but its biggest fiasco is the garbage dump that it has been mismanaging for two decades.

Its limits fall in the maintenance of fairly complex entities such as desalination plants, garbage dump or black water projects. Since 2013 the Municipality has run the desalination plant that has been sitting vacant ever since, perpetually waiting for some filters replacements.

It all started with a million dollars and high expectations. Back in 2000, the idea was to have one, centrally located garbage dump for the entire island. Construction and operating costs would be less; the two municipal governments could not come to an agreement where to locate such site.

The original Municipal dump had a lifespan of 10 years, but lasted 17 years without much maintenance, proper compacting and lack of proper layering of refuse. The original site of the 100 by 200 meter garbage dump in Mud Hole was opened in 2002. PMAIB (Proyecto Manejo Ambiental De Las Islas De La Bahía – Environmental Management Project of The Bay Islands) spent $850,000 to set up the site and another $600,000 to purchase garbage collection and management equipment: two garbage trucks, a compactor and a pusher.

Municipal dump is dotted with piles of old metal roofs, stacks of wooden pallets.

The equipment survived about a decade and the dump site survived 16 years. In 2018 after several outbreaks of fires and constant complaints of the public the PMAIB dump was finally covered up with a layer of dirt. This took place as Mayor Jerry Hynds took over the Municipality in 2018. The island’s refuse management problem was never solved, but only covered up and shifted to a new, adjacent site.

A new site for the growing municipality was needed and Roatan Electric Company (RECO) and Roatan Municipality worked together to secure land nearby the old dump. The site was just raw land devoid of trees yet it to serve as a “temporary” dumping site.

RECO purchased a six-acre property for around $250,000 and donated it to Roatan Municipality. In exchange RECO had promised to put a garbage incinerator on the site and use the capped dump site for a solar farm. Thus RECO has become a party to the Roatan garbage management fiasco.

Kelcy Warren, the American billionaire and owner of RECO, residing sometime on Barbareta, has focused a try-just-about-anything and see-if-it-works strategy for the power company. RECO has run its Wärtsilä generators on natural gas supplied from Warren’s US energy operation.

To the tune of $7 million it has recycled old and obsolete wind turbines for a wind farm and it built two solar plants that destroyed island forest and leveled hills. Warren, trying to add to his hodge-podge island eclectic empire, has been eyeing methane gas from Roatan’s mismanaged dump as another source of energy.

Unfortunately the municipal dump is a disaster that could happen before RECO gets control of the site. With each passing year, the probability of a catastrophic event increases. With the mismanagement of garbage and the proximity of the site to the sea and reef there is a danger of contaminating the island’s marine ecosystem.

Another catastrophic scenario, one of several, is where garbage is carried by water in a natural gulley, passes the mangroves and is carried by the rain water onto the reef of the entire Sandy Bay. This is unfortunately quite possible and would be a truly an ecological calamity.

Just a few months ago a large part of the gully has been interrupted with a mound of dirt mixed with trash. Now the “temporary” dump has a permanent leech pond with floating trash, plastics and rusting pieces of metal.

The volume of the garbage deposited at the dump is growing by 20 percent every year. “When I left we had 18 tons of garbage a day,” says Julio Galindo, ex Roatan Mayor and owner of AKR tourist resort, about the volume of garbage picked that the Roatan Municipal since 2017. “There are probably 40-50 tons [collected] a day now.”

Strong, dangerous chemicals, pollutants and plastics are sunk into the soil below the dump site. The engine of Roatan’s tourist industry – Sandy Bay, is just a hundred meters away, down current from the garbage dump. “Everything is there: car batteries, oils,” says Galindo. “The mangrove not enough to stop the runoff”

There is another, just as scary scenario where the island’s aquifer becomes contaminated by the refuse from the dump. For the past four years chemicals, oils and other contaminants leached into the soil below the “temporary” dump. These hazardous liquids and liquefied contaminants travel dozens of meters down through soil eventually reaching the aquifer used for drinking water across the island.

RECO has become a party to the Roatan garbage management fiasco.

At least the original PMAIB dump had retention walls and polyurethane liner. The “temporary” dump site has none of that. A clear sign of the toxicity of the dump is how, after just a few months, large trees that were left at the “temporary” garbage site had died. They couldn’t handle the pollutants, and toxic chemicals in the ground that slipped in and killed their root system.

There are signals of increased amount of refuse being found all over the island. Over the last several years trash in unprecedented quantities has been washing on to the reef in Palmetto and as far as Camp Bay. The tags from the food products place the origin of the trash as made in Honduras.

The problems with the Roatan garbage dump are not limited to what we could see, or to the solid waste itself. The old garbage site that has been on fire for years has likely not been stabilized and is another disaster waiting to happen. “The dump fire is probably still burning,” says Vernon Albert, a builder with experience in water and waste management from US who has been living and working on Roatan since 2005. “The 4 mm polyurethane heat-sealed liner is probably compromised due to the fire,” says Vernon.

The surface fire that had started on the PMAIB dump in 2013 was finally extinguished in 2018. Roatan Municipality had extinguished the surface fires by bringing in masses of dirt to cover the original dump that has not solved the problem of containing the fires that likely still smolder underneath the dirt cap.

But while the smoke has kept Roatanians preoccupied, the current covering up of the problem does not. The unsightly sight and foul smell is not only a nuisance, but they are also causing diseases and lowering property values in areas close to the dump.

Strong, dangerous chemicals, pollutants and plastics are sunk into the soil.

Galindo has more thoughts on Roatan Municipalities’ handling of the dump in Mud Hole. “The garbage dump is not temporary, it’s been four years now,” says Galindo. “I sold them [Roatan Municipality] 73 acres of land I regret selling them. They haven’t done anything with it,” says Julio Galindo, whose Anthony’s Key Resort is just two miles down from the current garbage dump.

The smell from the burning refuse site has been a headache for property owners and for tourists. The few trees that have been left at the site have died. Their roots were poisoned by the toxic seepage of the garbage: the battery chemicals, the industrial oils, Freon and rust.

There are other people very concerned with what environmental hazard and environmental disaster the dump has been. Nick Bach, of Roatan Marine park also thinks that some trash has been washed from the “temporary Roatan Municipal Dump. “The majority [of trash] comes from the colonias where there is inadequate trash removal and people just throw most of it on the streets, or in the creeks,” said Bach.

Some environmental voices have been critical of the looming environmental calamity. “This temporary dump is a disaster. It doesn’t have a containment wall, and practically has no maintenance,” said Joel Amaya. “There is one or two creeks that take the garbage to the sea, to the mangroves.”

Environmental group such as Bay Islands Conservation Association (BICA) on the other hand have placed the blame of the unfolding environmental disaster on bureaucratic hurdles. “The process of a technical landfill requires an environmental license, which requires the respective studies, which don’t happen overnight,” said Irma Brady, founder of BICA.

“The dump fire is probably still burning.”

The reason why the garbage dump site has been mismanaged for over two decades is also a question of priorities. Roatan Municipality spent millions of dollars to fix national roads while leaving their “temporary” garbage dump with practically no attention. While Roatan Municipality under Jerry Hynds (2018-2022) has embarked on a campaign of building new roads and rebuilding national roads network on the island, the building of a new dump has been placed on the back burner. Also RECO has spent millions of dollars on new solar projects while the site of the temporary garbage dump is a chemical wasteland.

There are few things more important than air and water and earth that we plant our food crops in. The Roatan municipal garbage dump has been affecting all of these issues.

It is also the issue of legacy. Neither municipal government nor any person is entitled to endanger or squabble resources passed onto him by prior generations. Sadly, now islanders find themselves allowing the destruction of the very environment that raised them.

Islanders Forced to Stay Home See their Electric Bills Surge

While Central governed forced all Hondurans to stay home for the past 63 days, some of the unintended consequences were not only fallen income, but also increase in electricity usage in homes full of grownups and children.

Edna Guzman, from Los Fuertes has seen her April issued bill of Lps. 524 go up to Lps. 718 in May. Roatan has one of the highest energy costs in Western Hemisphere and for many low income islanders electric bill takes a big chunk of their monthly budget.

Some of the unintended consequences were not only fallen income, but also increase in electricity usage.

Hot weather, mounting debt and fear of Corona virus has caused confusion and anger over bigger electric bills. “There are these phenomena of increase of energy use during quarantine in Europe and other countries… 25-50 percent more,” said Steven Guillen, a consultant with RECO at a meeting with protesters. After the meeting the National Police used tear gas, second time in island’s history, to disperse the protesters.

Reacting to COVID-19 government imposed lockdown, RECO has decided not to cut off services to customers that have unpaid bills until October 2020 and is not charging interest on these bills. The RECO policy of transferring the unpaid last-months bill has caused confusion amongst some customers. 

Roatan’s East Side Looks Towards Brighter Future

Santos Guardiola, is the largest in area of the four municipalities on the Bay Islands. It did not always exist in the obscurity it finds itself now, but was once a thriving fishing community with more fishing vessels than any other municipality in Honduras.

“I remember Oak Ridge harbor being busy with fishing and cargo boats in and out all day long,” said Joonel Solórzano, whose stepfather owned the popular Blue Bayou restaurant overlooking Oak Ridge Harbor.

Established in 1960 and named for one of Honduras former president, S.G. boasted a dry dock that kept local fishing fleet in top shape and a seafood factory that exported its goods to the US and employed hundreds of workers from all over the island.

Santos Guardiola has lived in the shadow of its little sister.

Decades ago, Santos Guardiola was also the center of entertainment. “Back then, we were able to party for days with no problem and there were no crimes to worry about,” said Zelda Nixon, a resident of Pandy Town. Santos Guardiola was also home to several popular bars and restaurant including the famous and now defunct, Casa Grande in Pandy Town. There was also Happy Landing on Oak Ridge Point and Blue Bay restaurant on Lawrence Hill, Oak Ridge.

Compared to its sister municipality on the west, Santos Guardiola has been struggling when it comes to growth, development and finding its own identity. Santos Guardiola has lived in the shadow of its little sister to the west for years, however, S.G is slowly moving out of obscurity and back into its own light.

Created in 1960, the youngest municipality in the Bay Islands has seen a resurgence of old businesses and the upsurge of new ones. Super Economico, a supermarket in Oak Ridge, near the bus stop, opened its doors in January of 2017. “My father liked the area because of the land and sea proximity,” said Claudia Ramirez who helps run her family business.

With steady growth and construction taking place on the Roatan’s east, the building supply and hardware chain, Madeyso, inaugurated a store in Pandy Town, in June of 2017. The store employs 10 workers from the area. “We opened a store in Santos Guardiola because we had more clients on the east of Roatan than anywhere else,” said Jolanie Romero, a sales adviser working with the company since 2013. “It was difficult to cover all the [eastern] communities requesting material such as Diamond Rock, Pandy Town, and Camp Bay, in one day.”

In 2015 the petroleum company Texaco opened its first gas station in S.G. at the entrance of Oak Ridge. In summer of 2019 BIP (Bay Islands Petroleum) and Circle K convenient store opened facilities in Jonesville.

In the last five years the municipality has been paving and improving roads all over the area, as small businesses continue to hit the economic trail on the east. “I was motivated to open my restaurant because of the changes taking place”, said Kislen Dilbert, owner of Island flavor restaurant in Politilly Bight. “The roads are better, which allow people to come to the east without wrecking their cars,” pointed out the former Justice of Peace for the municipality of Santos Guardiola. Happy Landing bar, on Oak Ridge Point and Henry’s Cove Resort and restaurant, in Punta Gorda, both re-penned after years of hibernation.

The growth and development have reached as far as Saint Helena, a once forgotten Santos Guardiola outpost.
This sleepy island was recently the recipient of one of the largest educational centers on the east end, it acquired community wide electricity for the first time provided by RECO, and it’s now home to the first concrete built municipal community dock in Santos Guardiola.

With all the development taking place and plans to build the first cruise ship dock on the east, the municipality of Santos Guardiola seems to be coming into its own fifth year. “If we prepare ourselves, tourism could have a huge effect on our community,” says Alex Avila, councilman for tourism and owner of Mamery Garinagu Center in Punta Gorda. “There are negative aspects of tourism, but if we are creative, make use of our natural resources, it could make the tourism industry on this end sustainable, we should be Ok”

The closing of the municipalities’ only banking 2018, had some negative effect on businesses. “The closing of Banco Atlántida has affected our business, but we are still here thanks to the support of some loyal clients that appreciates our services. To provide even more convenience to them, we convinced Ficohsa bank to open a stall in our building,” said Claudia Ramirez.

Wendy Gale, president of the patronato of Camp Bay, believes that with the building of the new cruise ship dock, banks will return and so will other businesses.

Councilwomen, Genie Hernandez says that “tourism is going to be good for S.G., but it’s important to have control so it doesn’t get out of hand; with development comes responsibility.”

The municipal office has also benefited from the changes; it helped increase; its tax revenue. It increased from 32 million Lempiras yearly to 52 million Lempiras in 2017, which has allowed for more municipal funded projects to be completed. The latest of which is the renovation of the old lighthouse in Oak Ridge, a reminder of Santos Guardiola’s prosperous past.

With things looking up for the east end of Roatan, it seems that the municipality might be regaining its place in the economical realm of the Bay Islands and finally moving out of the shadow of its little sister, and back where it once was.

Solution Appears on the Island’s Smoky Horizon

“When the wind blows form the West, North West it ends up on our house,” says Ana Svoboda, a local resident, who decided to purchase toxic gas masks for her family in case the toxic fumes raise again. “It chokes, it tears up my eyes, it makes me cough,” says Svoboda. “Even the dogs don’t want to go out of the house.”

While Svoboda’s home is usually upwind form the dump, east and downwind is Roatan’s tourist hub of Sandy Bay. “When the wind is really strong you can smell it all the way in West End,” says Svoboda. “It is shameful, with this many tourist that we have this.”

“The smoke is just terrible,” says Karen Ludlow. The toxic smell of burning garbage can be smelled not only in Western part of Sandy Bay but as far as Lawson Rock development… Over two kilometers downwind.

In November 2018, Karen Ludlow, the executive director of the Bay Islands Tourism Bureau, brought in Dr. Tony Sperline, owner of Sperling and Associates to see how the garbage fire could be stopped. Dr. Sperline produced a report of how to extinguish the fire using a specialized team for $3.4m or with a local team for $747,800 and submitted it to Roatan Municipality.

The Fire that had started in 2013 has only grown in scale since then. With little rain, and strong eastern winds the flames have gotten bigger and the smoke denser. Municipal garbage trucks continue to bring refuse from across the Roatan Municipality and dump it on top of the smoking trash stack. There are several families making a living from recycling the garbage and their homes are directly downwind from the burning refuse.

While Roatan residents seem to have lots of patience and restraint, that is not the case in other places in the Caribbean. In 2018, residents of St. Maarten Island sued the government entities for mismanagement of the local dump and allowing of constant fires.

On Roatan, social media is teeming with preoccupied island residents and tourists warning of impending disaster, “You poor people living on what was a beautiful tropical island. I am saddened by the lack of concern of the officials on Roatán. This horrible dump fire will drive your tourist away!” wrote on social media Judith Ann LaRoche.

The current mayor administration, albeit slower than many wish, is working at solving the problem of the fires and looking beyond the ongoing crisis. To manage the municipal garbage issue for decades to come, Roatan Municipality for $1.3 million purchased 76 acres of hillside land, between Coxen Hole and Mud Hole to construct a new municipal dump, build a handcraft market, a refuse center and possibly a municipal cemetery.

“The dump heap was designed to go as high as 14 meters, that is with periodical leveling off with dirt to keep the garbage flat, firm and absorbing its odors,” wrote Bay Islands Voice about Roatan Garbage Dump in 2006. The dump opened in 2002 and was supposed to serve the Municipality for 10 years. The dump lasted 17 years, and barely 10 meters high, in part because a layer of dirt was never placed on every one meter of trash as planned. The refuse was never properly compacted, layer or stacked. Now it’s just a giant mess. “It’s just too steep,” says Ludlow.

As part of a plan to extinguish the fire a six-acre property was purchased for around $250,000 by RECO and donated to Roatan Municipality. “The [central] government never offered to help, so a private business stepped in,” said Nidia Hernandez, a municipal council member. The plan is to move part of the garbage from the existing dump onto the new adjacent site and cap it with earth. One thing that Roatan has is the perfect soil to cap the refuse. “Its clay based, it’s a perfect type of dirt for capping the dump,” says Ludlow.

In exchange for the donation, RECO will be able to put a garbage incinerator on the six-acre site and use the capped dump site for a solar farm. While the power expected from the incinerator is not expected to be much, the incinerated ashes will reduce the volume of garbage placed in the dump and extend its years of usefulness.

RECO already offered to buy and manage the dump from the Municipality four years before when Dorn Ebanks was mayor. The mayor declined the offer and the ordeal just continued. The mismanagement of the dump was done by subsequent Roatan Municipal governments, yet some wanted central government to help with Roatan’s trash.

Saint Helena and Barbareta get connected to Roatan’s Electrical Grid

The three power cables and a fiberoptic cable were fitted inside a cable and protected with an armor coating. “You still don’t want to put a boat propeller across it,” but it’s pretty strong, very rugged,” says Ing. Phil Michael of Alliance Power. “It’s designed to be a submarine cable.” Ing. Michael has worked on project development for 28-Megawatt propane powered power plant brought by RECO on line in 2017.

The 5′ diameter cable is rated for 15 KW and Kerite company of Massachusetts fabricated the cable brought in on two cable spools winning a contract bid of $2.5 million dollars. Most of the submarine cable will lie in around 20 feet of water. The challenge of the 120 feet will come at the Morat channel where currents and depth of 120 feet will make the operation more difficult.

Cable was unwound, floated on the surface and sunk in areas with no coral.

A 3D map of the terrain was composed by Columbian Company Geomares in preparation of the estimating the length and laying of the cable. According to Ing. Michael three echosounders with multiple beams scanned the underwater topography and allowed for the more precise planning of the cable’s route.

The cable was unwound, floated on the surface and sunk in areas with no coral. According to Matt Harper, RECO’s operations manager, Tegucigalpa based biologist relocated 400 soft corals to make room for the cable.

The first phase of the project begun on March 7 and involved laying of the 1.5-kilometer cable between the eastern edge of Port Royal to the western shore of Saint Helene island. The cable enters the water at the very last portion of elevated piece of Roatan, on the edge of the mangroves, on the western Port Royal. The overall cost of installation is $1.8 million.

While Ing. Michael originally estimated the work to last four-five days, it took twice that long. There were delays due to high wind and difficulty of fitting the cable. “We were not able to lay it int a small, shallow creek,” explained Harper. The installers had to adopt on the go to weather conditions and topography.

The first portion of the operation was much simpler as the cable was to be laid at a dept of only 3 to 12 feet. Subway watersports and local Saint Helene divers helped in making sure the cable was lowered in place. “Its heavy enough to not be covered,” explained Harper, “If we were to cover the cable it would stir up the bottom.”

The cable has the enough current capacity for 6 megawatts and fiberglass poles and above ground wire has already been installed on Santa Helena and on Barbareta cable will be laid underground. RECO estimates that currently only 50 of the 250 homes on the island have any sort of electric power, usually generators.

The second phase of the project is due to begin in early April and it will connect Santa Helena and Barbareta island developed by billionaire Kelcy Warren. Warren purchased 52% shares of RECO in 2008 and is developing Barbareta as a holiday residence. Dallas based Warren has who made his fortune in oil and gas pipelines, according to Forbes magazine, is valued at 4.3 Billion dollars. Warren in the richest man in Honduras and the 478th richest man on the planet.