The Ashcroft Alliance is taking us to court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, over the Department of the Environment’s (DOE) decision to reject its proposal for a cruise tourism terminal at the Port of Belize Limited (PBL). The Amandala says the Alliance claims that the DOE had “applied different and more stringent standards to the applications made by PBL than those which had been applied to other, comparable, applications for environmental approval, including especially the applications made by two greenfield developments: Port of Magical Belize [PMB] and Stake Bank [SB].”
The charge is favoritism. The principal of the group, Lord Ashcroft, should know what that is. To list just a few of his coups, a government, PUP, changed the law so that he could get ownership of our then sole telecommunications company, BTL; he was allowed to expand his control of our private banking system beyond 50%; and he was given an ambassadorship to the United Nations.
But he has not been appreciative of the largesse. He has been pit-bull vicious with those who don’t bow to his wishes. He embarrassed the government that facilitated his purchase of BTL, and he took us to the cleaners when, because of his group’s intransigence and greed, we were forced to take the company back. His persecution of the country is not limited to BTL.
Despite GoB setting up a 3-member Tribunal, as per the law, to address Waterloo’s appeal of the DOE’s decision which was made on the advice of the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC), the Alliance has gone to international court to scandalize the country and air out its grief. In the you-have-to-read-it-yourself-to-believe-it category, our government reportedly has 3 months to arrive at an “amicable settlement” with the group.
So many assets which the GoB “facilitated” into the hands of Mr. Luke Espat, one of them PBL, ended up in the control of the Alliance. Espat has said a government (PUP) reneged on assurances it gave him about the port. One of those assurances was that the port in Big Creek would be limited exclusively to bananas. Another was that he would be supported in the development of a cruise terminal at PBL.
His claims against the GoB aside, if Espat is a victim, the vicious weapon that did him in is the same one that has separated many in Belize from their homes and their businesses: the stratospheric cost of money. Companies owned or nominally under Espat’s control borrowed from the Belize Bank (or affiliates). In 2013 the court ruled that Espat had to pay the Belize Bank $29 million, for loans he had guaranteed for Indeco Enterprises Ltd., at 17% interest rate; Belize Crocodile and Reptile Breeders, 12%; and Belize Ready Mix Concrete, 17%. Luke Espat lost other prime properties to the bankers.
Espat was “facilitated” with ownership of PBL in 2002, and in 2012, after a number of his companies failed, the port fell into receivership. In September 2019 it became public that the Alliance affiliate, Waterloo, had interest in a mega project for PBL that included a cruise facility that could accommodate the world’s largest cruise ships. As mentioned, Waterloo has not received approval for this project. Meanwhile, two other cruise port projects have received the go ahead.
It is important to understand that everyone, including Waterloo and its principal, knows that three large cruise ports just can’t work in Belize City. And Waterloo seems to be the “Johnny-come-lately” on the block. When Caribbean Maritime Magazine, the official journal of the Caribbean Shipping Association, discussed cruise ports proposals in Belize City in January 2018, in an article titled “A question of space”, mention was made of only two, and PBL wasn’t one of them. Waterloo does claim to have done some research on a cruise terminal prior to that discussion. But any such exploration had to end there, because PBL was in receivership.
The Stake Bank project shouldn’t have been called out by Waterloo because it is water under the bridge, the project having broken ground and commenced construction back in 2019. The first phase of that project was scheduled to have been completed last year, but wasn’t, probably because of the Covid-19 pandemic. There are some parts of that project that are yet to be completed, and these could be revisited if interested groups have deep enough concern, but essentially that ship has sailed, and no amount of crying “foul” can bring it back to the dock.
In respect to the proposed Port Magical Belize cruise port, which reportedly got clearance from the DOE, indeed the EIA comes up short in a few areas. Looking at the marine side of the project, “forensic skills” are needed to find out the length and width of the channel to be dredged, and exactly how many million cubic meters of material will be removed from the seabed. It seems that all the dredged material will be placed onshore, much of it to be used for the construction of an artificial peninsula 0.4-miles wide and 0.9-miles long. If the filling for the peninsula is 2 meters deep, that alone will take 2 million cubic meters of material. Some NGOs have questioned DOE approval of PMB.
PMB has a number of natural advantages over PBL. On the coast, about 10 miles south of Belize City, it is out of “harm’s” way. The quantity of dredging needed is probably less than half of what is necessary at PBL to attain the same objective. PMB is in a less environmentally sensitive area than PBL, and it wouldn’t expose Belize City to increased damage from hurricanes.
The NEAC has advised that the dredging proposed by PBL carries too much risk for our environment. And historically silting is a problem between the mouths of the Sibun River and Haulover Creek/Belize River, where the port is located. While Waterloo’s experts claim their research showed minimal siltation at the port since 2001, the Guardian (BZ), which was the government’s newspaper between 2008 and 2020, said in an article in 2011 that the berthing area at the port, which, at a cost of around $40 million, had been dredged to a depth of 28 feet just before the port was sold to Luke Espat in 2002, had “silted up and most ships with drafts of over 18 feet find it very difficult to dock at the pier.”
PMB is a threat to PBL if it is realized, not only for its cruise potential. Down the road it could also get into the cargo business. The hurdles for PBL are many. The port is “maxed” for the size ships it can accommodate, but to hear the Ashcroft Alliance, favoritism is the shoal in its path. So used to getting preferential treatment, the Alliance sees injustice where there is a level playing field.
The Alliance’s complaints aren’t finding many sympathetic ears in Belize, and that’s for all the disrespect and bad things it has done to our country. The fact, for anyone who would just open their eyes and read the unbiased environmental report, is that proceeding with this Waterloo project as envisaged invites an environmental disaster and disgrace for Belize.