Regular citizens are not the only ones pushing back against the idea of the cruise port.
Today, several environmental NGO's signed a letter of objection addressed to the Prime Minister, John Briceno. These NGO's include WWF, BTIA, Oceana, Belize Audubon Society, FRagments of Hope, and more. In the letter, they raised three important points.
The first is that ocean dumping should not even be considered for Belize, because of the dangers it poses to the barrier reef and other marine life, and the idea should be abandoned immediately.
The second is that a comprehensive cruise port strategy should be prepared by an independent consultant before the continuation of any ports currently in development.
And finally, they are asked that the laws be revised so that the public can play a larger role in the management of shared natural resources. Spokesperson for the NGO's, Nadia Bood from World Wildlife Fund, responded to some of the claims made last night at the public consultation. We spoke to her via ZOOM:
Nadia Bood, Head, WWF Program Office
"They made a lot of false statements and I may touch on a couple of those. One of their technical experts mention the fact that oh it's the same material that was washed up and brought to the sea that will be dredged up and dump back into the sea. They didn't even acknowledge the fact that these are soil material that over time have been impacted by land basis sources of runoff pollutants. Over the years you have the accumulation of heavy metals, another serious hazardous pollutants that will be dugged up and then they are proposing to dump that on sea. We are recommending that instead of dumping at sea to dump it on land, for example. One the experts also mentioned that the reason that they are not considering the land portion is because the material is hazardous. They actually mentioned that the material is hazardous and they would have to contemplate making sure that all the water is evaporated from whatever they dredge up before even considering transporting anywhere. The main fact that they mentioned that it shows that the material is hazardous and if we think about the marine environment which is very sensitive to any minor changes in water quality in nutrient input, it can result in die off the reef, it could kill marine life, plus we don't know what could be accumulated in the tissue of marine organisms, commercial ones, fishes and how that would affect our health if we consume. Another issue, they keep on mentioning that the area is a dead zone. Using some information from old data we spoke to them about the impact on that area on the grounds and migratory paths to Manatees - those were not effectively addressed and not to mention the impact that we will happen on the mangroves and potential impact on flooding in that particular area. But as I mentioned before one of our key concerns is the dumping at sea. It has just been 2 years since we got off the UNESCO world heritage endanger list. I work for world wildlife fund, we work closely with the government to make sure that the country is able to address those indicators that the world heritage committee had ask the country to address in order for them to be considered to be taken off the list. So we were able to do that, the country celebrated and its just 2 years later that they are proposing something like this? Come on. Australia has been on the endanger list because of the similar thing of dumping within their marine environment. If we pursue a project like this, this will set precedence, if one project could do it, who is to say that many other projects won't try to do it as well."
Just before 6 tonight, the Prime Minister responded to the letter, simply saying that he will forward it to the appropriate ministers. He added too that the project has not been approved as yet and must go through its entire process before it can even get to Cabinet for consideration. A release from the Fisheries Department also stated that the will continue their review of the EIA on the project.
