The aftermath of Hurricane Dean, thank God, is not near as serious as that of Hurricane Ivan, but officials are concerned that residual affects of a more-prepared population could cause serious environmental problems – this from a National Hurricane Centre spokesman.
Herbert “Stinky” Dingleberry, special adviser to the assistant administrative support person (II) for the undersecretary of the co-deputy sub-officer for tertiary post-event emergency actions said the newly-appointed working team of his ad-hoc blue-ribbon committee is more than a bit concerned about the after affects of the after affects of Hurricane Dean.
“It’s not so much the wind, wave and water damage we’re concerned with. That is very evident, is planned for, and can be dealt with accordingly,” Dingleberry said. “What my working sub-committee has been appointed to do is to plan a way forward for dealing with the influx of thousands of miniature environmental hazards that will no doubt begin arriving at the dump.”
Mr. Dingleberry is speaking, of course, of the countless little plastic bags into which people have made doody.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan ushered in a new standard of hygienic hurricane season “poo-tocol” when residents where urged by government officials to “make doody” in plastic bags.
Since this is now an official –albeit unpublished and unacknowledged by the government – hurricane activity, the government has no alternative but to develop a plan of how best to discard tons of human fecal doggy bags. And that plan will have to be funded, so says Mr. Dingleberry.
“Since the government’s emergency resources are already stretched to the max, we will be asking the residents of the Cayman Islands to financially assist us with the proper purging of this prolific pile of poo,” he told Cayblogger. “As such, we will charge all families $20 annually and all individuals $5 annually in order to help us avoid a catastrophic environmental situation.” (Editor's note: Employees and management of Cayman Net News will be charged double. Carol Hay will be charged quadruple.)
The Segregated Human Intestinal Trash Fund – temporarily called the “Doody Duty” – will be added to each Caribbean Utility customer’s utility bill beginning 1 January 2008, until a more efficient mode of collection can be determined, debated and dismissed.
Until then, Dingleberry said his subcommittee will be setting up collection centres around the island to take doo-nations to offset expenses for the current season, and he encourages everyone in the Islands to take a moment to visit one of the sites and drop a little something in the box.
“We hope to move enabling legislation down the pipeline as quickly as possible to prevent it becoming backed-up,” Dingleberry said. “When the legislation process gets bound or blocked, the end result is that not even the most fervent pushing can move things along. We’re trying to avoid putting any strain on the pipeline and we feel that softening the process and making legislation that is easy for the residents to swallow will make it easy for us to pass.”
Cayblogger reminds everyone: If you can’t afford the duty, keep the doody in your booty.