Before the Easter break we told you about the two southern communities that are trying to break into the tourism industry: Punta Negra and Monkey River. While these villages have pretty much established their unique tourist packages, they have challenges and setbacks. Monkey River certainly has its fair share of problems with coastline erosion. Well the City Council along with the Department of Environment want to help. They plan on collecting as many used tires as they can to build a barrier along Monkey River’s coastline. Now this isn’t the first time a project like this has been done in Monkey River but city councillor Phillip Willoughby says they plan on doing a better and more effective job this time.

Phillip Willoughby - City Councillor
"On the first of May the Belize City Council will have its annual clean-up campaign, its annual clean initiative. Within this initiative we take this opportunity to say to all the bus owners, bus entities, mechanics, garage shop, tire repair shops, motorists inclusive if there is anyone who has any used tires, derelict tires that they would like to discard off, we would like to take this opportunity to request these tires if they can deposit it at the transfer station on the left hand side of the Belize City Council can pick it up - we will be more than willing to do so. Its two folds, we are looking to solve a problem the city has, we know that we are fastly approaching the rainy season as well as the hurricane season. These tires serve as water catchment areas or breeding grounds for mosquitos so we are looking to collect these tires and with the blessings from the mayor we will be transporting these tired to the chairman Mr. Ivan Williams, these tires to Money River to allow them to build some sort remedial wall to help mitigate against further erosion of the coastline. We knew that this initiative was done already; maybe there are some aspects of the methodology that can be changed to suit the changing time with technology and the way it was done. Again this is just a short term remedial plan to fight against further erosion and within the best time frame we can help to assist in the mitigation against further erosion then we are willing to help in this endeavour. So again we will be lending a hand with our engineers to see how we can help. We hope that other engineers and the village council have other technical expertise that can complement the initiative and we go from there."

Willoughby told us that they already got a bulk load of tires from Yony Rosado but they need a whole LOT more for this project so if you all have used tires laying around in your yard and don’t know what to do with them, kindly give them to the city council for this Monkey River initiative. As you heard the city council will be having a clean-up campaign on May 1st and they will be looking out for those used tires.