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But “As soon as possibleâ€￾ can’t be now.  Today the Minister of State in environment and forestry Dr. Omar Figueroa weighed in on the New River. He acknowledged the severity of the problem and how it is aggravated by the rivers unique flow and positioning. He also stressed that the appropriate authorities are working on a long tern plan to try and restore the river’s health.

Hon. Omar Figueroa - Minister of State, Environment
"There is no two ways about it, what is happening at the new river is a cause of serious concern. It is extremely important for us to understand the problem that we face ...let me take a step back, New River is interesting for many reasons. If you look at the New River it starts up in the New River lagoon, at the point where it leaves the lagoon, I believe it is about 5 meters above sea level, the river winds for about 90 miles before it reaches the coast and when it gets to San Estevan, I believe it is about 9 meters above sea level so it is a unique river system because it is actually going a little up before it meanders downstream into the ocean what is happening right now is something like a perfect storm that has hit the area, we have the worst drought I believe in about the last 30 years, there is no fresh water feeding into that system. The New River has essentially become stagnant. You couple that with some point sources of pollution which are quite a few that are feeding into the river and you start losing oxygen from the river. We just can’t worry about cleaning up the fish kill which we started to do to try and release that stench but something more drastic needs to be done and I don’t want to discuss what we are looking at right now but within the next day or two we will take some more serious measures to see if we can get the river to start moving down a bit and get that stench further down but the problem will not go away until we get some serious rains and even when we do get serious rains, the experts are saying it will get a bit worse before it gets better because you will start bringing in a lot of what is on the river banks, it will start washing in. So the New River needs a long term strategy to really look at it."