Letter: You need to make Bermuda safer and cleaner

FRIDAY, DEC. 30: Dear Sir,

I have been a loyal fan of the beauties of nature as well as the habitual natives’ kindnesses to strangers in Bermuda since my first visit there in the summer of 1969.

Because it was that first visit that lead me to meet up with the beautiful woman who ultimately became my wife on Elbow Beach; and because she too was visiting her wonderful cousins and residents of the island, I have become a regular traveller to the island.

I am not sure how many times I have visited in the past four decades, but it surely has to be more than a dozen trips.

Since my own immediate family, including my mother and father and aunt and uncle, were tourists in Bermuda long before I was, and photographed the island in perhaps the 1940s and ‘50s, I have a good general idea of its development since then.

My wife, Ina, and I returned several weeks ago from our latest, almost two week trip to the island. During that time, we walked, motor-bicycled, boated and drove to points all over the island, from St. George’s to the old dock and boat yards in Somerset.

Dispute

From all of these trips islandwide, I was a bit taken aback by all the housing development on the island since our last trip there four years ago.

And, I was particularly concerned by the then on-going dispute over granting of planning permission to Cabinet Minister Zane DeSilva to build warehouses on environmentally protected land.

Bermuda’s rare and amazing natural areas, including, of course, its beaches, golf courses and parks, are to me and many others sacred ground.

It appears, however, from our observations, that erosion is setting in island-wide.

By erosion, I mean not just the land and the water quality themselves, but the attitudes of some of those living on the island as well as the tourists, and the apparent inability of the island’s leadership or its residents to observe what needs to be done to stop this erosion.

Symbolic of that erosion is the trash obviously thrown by auto and truck drivers as well as pedestrians along the roads and streets, even near and on beaches, parks and golf courses.

Just as disturbing is the state of traffic on the roads. Cars were not allowed on the island until 1946. Now everything goes, and yet the speed limits are supposed to average 35 miles per hour.

Narrow roads

Pedestrians and bicyclists and runners are naturally free to exercise along narrow roads, probably built in the early 1900s without much change since then.

Today, regularly speeding large trucks and buses as well as all sized cars now regularly threaten walkers’ and cyclists’ very existence as those large vehicles pass them, mostly at speeds of 40 to 50 miles per hour.

Once, while walking along a road, I spotted two trucks moving in opposite directions in the road path I was taking. Immediately, I moved to the side of a wall and put my back up to it. The truck driver speeding on my side, apparently not seeing me, zipped past and came so close to hitting my body that I could almost feel the truck’s side rails brushing my stomach.

It seems that bad habits not only die hard, but they tend to become more and more atrocious.

Worse yet, when out of date roads collect more and more car, bus and truck traffic, almost nothing has been done to protect public safety or clean up the road messes left behind.

And, it appears Bermudians wait until tourist time to clean up the messes along island beaches.

Treasure

Bermuda is an incredible historic and environmental treasure that obviously now needs some keen leadership and public awareness to keep nature’s environment, including the beaches, as clean and as safe as possible.

Perhaps, its school children and teachers should make it a regular habit to clean up their surroundings so the next generation becomes more aware of the need to protect the environment.

I believe its political leadership, as well as its residents, need to ask themselves what must be done to make the roads safer, and the island cleaner from trash and development.

They also need to restrain development threatening its waters, plants and wild creatures. The future of treasure island depends upon that!

Dennie Williams

Litchfield, Connecticut