Laundry worry

by TREVOR YEARWOOD

TROPICAL LAUNDRIES' PLAN to relocate at Spooner's Hill, St Michael may run into a petition from residents.

"I'm looking at getting a petition against this laundry being set up here," said Cynthia Hall of Derriston Road, who complained that the laundry was going to be right in her backyard.

"I am thinking about going around and getting some signatures. This is a residential area. Why now you want to make it industrial?"

Tropical Laundries is looking to relocate to the business complex shared by Popular Discounts supermarket because of the destruction by fire of its Country Road, St Michael operation on June 27, 2008.

An environmental scoping study (ESS) its owners commissioned said in essence that the laundry would not be an environmental risk.

While some people living in the area said the laundry would be convenient for them, others said they remained worried - despite the assurances given in the report on the study.

"I'm worried about the effect the [discharge] into the air will have on children in areas like Fairfield, downwind from the laundry," Derriston Road resident Theresa Bishop said.

She told the WEEKEND NATION one concern was whether the fumes and other releases from the laundry could adversely affect women in their reproductive years.

Edward Walcott, who also lives near the business complex, said he was concerned about the plan to store "hazardous" material on the compound prior to shipping it overseas.

"I am also worried about this plan to discharge waste water into the suck-wells on site," he added. "That water is sure to penetrate deep down, get into and cause problems for our ground water supplies."

The report on the environmental study said that before being discharged the waste water would be treated to remove anything that could cause environmental problems.

One resident, James Hall, said questions had been raised about the effect the laundry was having on the Louis Lynch Secondary School before the 2008 fire.

"The school has moved," he pointed out. "If the laundry is so harmless, why can't they build it back in the same spot in Country Road?"

An Allamby Gap, Spooner's Hill small businessman who identified himself only as "Huckleberry" said: "The safety measures the laundry says it will take may well amount to the cost of another laundry. Who will be there to ensure that the laundry does what it promises it will do?"

Several residents who declined to be identified said the laundry should be in an industrial district such as the Grazettes Industrial Park or on the coast, where, as one put it, "everything will blow out to sea".

Use of the commonplace but controversial agent "perc" (perchloroethylene) in the dry-cleaning operation also surfaced as a concern, despite the indication from the environmental report that it would be used in a well-controlled environment.