So, since only two out of the three tribunal members have to support a successful appeal of the PBL Waterloo Project, we now turn to the potential views of one of the Tribunal's members: the Business Senator.
As viewers will remember, one of his constituents, the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has made its stance clear on the development proposal. They support it, and that's the point that the Chamber made in their war of press releases against the Department of Environment. They also made that point to our news team 2 weeks ago when we asked about it:
Marcello Blake, President, Chamber Of Commerce
"That comment made in the release by the department is an assumption that in fact that technical information provided would have change our vote, because at the end of the day we are in fact as you rightly said pro-business, pro-development and unless it's going to be detrimental to the country, then why would we not support the initiative. At the end of the day you have to look at each investment and each project individually. For us the cargo expansion is very important to commerce and to business and having that central within the city helps for the movement of every container that needs to be transported across this country and so that expansion is very important to business on a whole particularly to commerce."
Reporter
"Within an eight square mile radius you have 3 competing interest, you said that the chamber is pro-business and I get that, but an integral part of business these days is our ability to strike a balance between that and the environmental concerns. Did the Chamber of Commerce take that into consideration when it said yes to the cargo expansion project?"
Marcello Blake, President, Chamber Of Commerce
"With the information that was available to us yes, we did take that into consideration, because at the end of the day the environment is important and of course with our view that business must continue it can't be to the detriment of the environment that we support something that would have adverse effects at the end of the day."
Reporter
"But the larger NEAC seems to think that based on their environmental impact assessments and the series of signs in general, seems that it's going to have an adverse effect on the environment."
Marcello Blake, President, Chamber Of Commerce
"For us we can only go based on the information that was available to us and so we place our vote using that information. For us at the end of the day the environment while its important, business has to continue just the same. So it always going to be a balancing act and while the other members may have seen something differently we continue to stand on our vote."
This evening, we contacted Business Senator Kevin Herrera for an interview, and he told us that he isn't prepared to make any comments at this time because that would pre-empt the process.
