Please publish this letter in your well read newspaper as the intention is not to bash but to share ideas with the reading public ensuring that the errors of the recent past can be avoided in future. My public issue relates to the proposed redevelopment of Warner Park as a sporting complex. But firstly, I must congratulate the Government on securing the necessary funding to construct what could be a well designed and publicly functional sporting facility if consideration be given to public convenience and long term sporting needs.

There is this trend in St Kitts that one facility be destroyed in order to build another. The whole issue of the Fountain in Independence Square is a good example. There are benefits to leaving Warner Park as a Cricketing facility while relocating Track & Field and Football to a more suitable location. The reasons for such a suggestion are given in this letter designed to stimulate constructive discussion not political partisanship, often resulting in illogical outcomes and wasted funds.

Warner Park was given to the people of St Kitts as an ‘open recreational space’in which all are to participate. Not just the top athletes but every Tom, Dick and Harry. Warner Park is more than just a playing field. Numerous other functions are held there beside Football and Cricket and logically if this open space is subdivided and stands built all around, many of the uses to which this facility was home to in the past, will have to be abandoned. Any Sports Stadium built will naturally only cater to the top athletes, as the maintenance of the surfaces will be required to be top class and consequently costly. ‘Bonabises’ like myself who only want to ‘work up a sweat’ would therefore have one less playing area if plans progress for Warner Park.

Any city needs open spaces to assist that city to breathe purer air and to cool itself. Basseterre is no exception. Warner Park with its limited restrictions to the Trade Winds provides some of the breathing and cooling necessary to maintaining reasonably pleasant temperatures in Basseterre. Construction of more Spectator Stands may only worsen the situation. reducing the dispersal of pollutants from the ever increasing number of vehicles on the cities roads. Parking problems can also be reduced if Track & Field and Football were removed from the city. Any major event at Warner Park is a parking nightmare for drivers in Basseterre. When the USA played St Kitts recently, parking and driving chaos reigned supreme. l’liis could be avoided in future if we were willing to make the right decisions now. A lesson to be learned is it’s unwise to hustle today to regret tomorrow!

Contemporary Track & Field and Football facilities demand approximately four to five times the stadium space for lighted public parking. Parking is not available around Warner Park without major disruption to normal traffic flows. This naturally is a major consideration in the suggestion that the National Stadium be located close to the major city but to the East in the vicinity of the Kim Collins Highway or west of Camps but south of the Island’s Main Road, where the land slopes gently to the sea. The Kim Collins Highway meets all the requirements; ease of access, parking, proximity to main communities, low winds, level ground etc but suffers from suggestions of negative effects on the water table in the vicinity.

Modern, environmentally friendly facilities and buildings produce no waste to soak into and damage the surrounding soil. A National Stadium located to the more northerly end of the Kim Collins Highway, with ease of access from many directions, would require such a waste management plant. A National Stadium with a Treatment Plant is the way to overcome the fears of water pollution in the Ponds/Needsmust area. These plants now produce almost 100% effluent free water after treatment. That quality of water is more than suitable for use with the sprinkler system for irrigation of the grass. The quality of water after treatment will have no effect on the submerged water table, about which we hear so much.

These Treatment Systems are not overly expensive and with time become more economical to operate than the more familiar septic systems with soak-aways. Two buildings currently use such plants as part of their daily operations. the National Insurance building on Church Street, which has no soak-away, and Timothy Beach Resort at Frigate Bay where their sprinklers are fed with treated water for lawn and garden maintenance. Both treatment systems were purchased from Cromoglass Corp of Pennsylvania in the USA.

There are long term solutions to our problems if only we would spend the time to seek such. To facilitate the process must be an open, honest and public tendering process for any new Sporting Complex. It is time that we come out of our political boxes and get the public involved in what is best for us. Politicians and technocrats do not always have the simple solutions to our simple problems. Provide us with all the facts and let there be public discussion on what we wish for a Sporting Complex.

Gene S. Howell