Last Friday, we showed you what David Gegg, the Founding Director of Portico Enterprises Limited, had to say about all the work his company had to do to get the environmental clearance to move ahead with the mega cruise project known as the Port of Magical Belize.
That's the cruise terminal that his company proposes to build some 6 kilometers south of the Sibun River, in the Belize District. Well, the United Democratic Party is disputing Gegg's sequence of events. They say that he did not give accurate details on how the interactions went between his company and the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC).
In a late evening press release, the UDP said that the Department of Environment did not legally commit to giving environmental clearance to Portico Enterprises in August 2020. That's back when the Barrow Administration's final term in office was coming to a close, and the UDP says that there was no legally convened meeting in that month. The party thinks that a project of this magnitude should never be rushed through the environmental screening process without adequate public consultation. And, the UDP thinks that if they held public consultations on this project last year during the pandemic, the process would have fallen short of adequately addressing public concerns.
From the perspective of the UDP, there were important concerns which the NEAC had back when it was constituted under the Barrow Government.
The UDP says, quote, "At the last, legally constituted meeting of the NEAC under the previous UDP administration, held in October 2020, it was decided to present the developer with existing environmental concerns regarding the project and to withhold project approval. Important Environmental concerns that existed and needed to be addressed were:
1. The EIA had not sufficiently treated the threat posed by the construction of the peninsula on the feeding and migratory grounds of manatees. 2. The EIA had not demonstrated how the project design took into account mitigation measures to address such impacts. What can the project do differently to lessen the impact on manatees? This remained unclear.
3. The impact on the retention zone around the mouth of the Sibun from the dredging that would be needed to construct the artificial peninsula is of great concern. This may lead to beach and coastal erosion later on, either nearby or further away.
4. The creation of an artificial peninsula is unnecessary. Who would own the land? What permissions have been received?
5. The dissection of important mangrove habitats by the access road was of great concern. More importantly, the disruption of surface flow by the presence of the filled road could lead to vegetative dieback or alteration of the flood retention regime in the area.
6. Overall, the economic feasibility of having a port just a few miles from Stake Bank, and the cumulative environmental impacts on the immediate vicinity of these ports, and on our fragile reef systems, have not been assessed.
It is also important to underscore the significance of not granting environmental clearance to this, or any other port project, without having a clearly defined multi-port strategy." End quote.
And for these reasons, the UDP thinks that the Briceno Government's decision to grant environmental clearance to the Port of Magical Belize is a big mistake.
The Party says, quote, "This project, from all indications, is an environmental disaster and therefore, it is unfortunate and regrettable that the People's United Party government has prematurely approved the ECP amidst serious environmental concerns and without any clear multi-port strategy." End quote.
So, what does David Gegg think about negative views like these about his company's proposed development? We asked him to discuss some of the environmental concerns, and here's how that conversation went last Friday:
We also asked Gegg to discuss the possible impact on the local manatee population. A week ago, Jamal Galvez, the well-known manatee conservationist, criticized the approval of the project's environmental clearance. He told us that in his opinion, the proposed peninsula will have major impacts on fish and marine megafauna and that it could become an obstacle to a major manatee migration route.
Here's how Gegg responded to those views:
Tomorrow, we'll show you what Gegg had to say about the Feinstein Group's Port Coral, and the proposed Waterloo Project at the Port of Belize.
