And from one proposed cruise port to another - as we told you yesterday, the Port of Belize Expansion Project was granted environmental clearance with conditions. This comes after multiple rejected proposals and public consultations. Today the Chief Environmental Officer told us via Zoom how this proposal differs, and what the conditions for approval are.
Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer
"The port was granted approval with conditions to avoid, prevent and mitigate the adverse environmental impacts related to the project during the construction and operational phases and it also was approved based on conversations and requests from the NEAC to look at some of the socio-economic issues so look at issues in relation to traffic management issues related to employment, grievance mechanisms and these types of things."
"As you know this project has been deliberated by the NEAC I think about 3 times before. There was 2 different submissions in the past I think we met about 3 or 4 times to discuss the project so the NEAC already knows the potential negative and socio-economic impacts of this project so the discussion in a way was a bit easier. The difference with this version of the EIA is that the project proponents, they knew what were the issues why the EIA was rejected before. So there's a series of issues that were mentioned why the second EIA report was rejected and the project proponent looked at those issues and they clarified those issues within these 2026 submission."
"Procedurally, this project was processed according to the process procedure and law that we have. On average, whenever there's a public consultation, the NEAC would meet maybe 11 to 12 days thereafter, that's on average. This timeframe for the NEAC to meet after the public consultation was 8 days but the reason why it was 8 days was because we would have met in any case right after Easter break, which would have given you 11, 12 days or so."
"We also have to think about the workload the unit has and the different EIAs that are in the pipeline in various stages and so the department of environment really and truly legally has 60 days after receiving the final EIA to make a decision to inform the developer what the decision is. Within that 60 days we have to send out the public notice for two weeks, in this I think the public notice was out for 3 weeks, we have to hold a NEAC site inspection and the public consultation and we need to hold the NEAC meeting so we need to take that time frame, that 60 days, into consideration in relation to the fact that the Easter break would have been coming and the amount of work the unit has in relation to the EIAs within the pipeline."
