Lord Ashcroft, a very powerful man in our country, has suggested on a number of occasions that some of our political leaders are corrupt. One of his companies, Waterloo Investment Holdings Ltd., since its cruise tourism port proposal at the Port of Belize (PBL) was denied environmental clearance from the Department of the Environment (DOE), has added a new verse to this tune, which is that some of our environmental professionals are suspect.
Because of their importance to the development and growth of the nation, the individuals in the professional class enjoy the greatest security, salaries, and perks. The professionals with the most security are in public employ, and it is from this group that the government draws most of the talent that serves on the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC).
In times past, the talented individuals chosen by the GoB to serve on the NEAC were 100% public employees. However, since a change was made in the system a couple decades ago, some of GoB’s employees hover between private and public.
The heads of government departments, the Permanent Secretaries, were “permanent” public employees who rose through the ranks and at the age of 55 or 60 retired and were put on pension for the rest of their lives. The Chief Executive Officers (CEO), who replaced the Permanent Secretaries, do not have the security of Permanent Secretaries. The tenure of the CEO is tied to their political bosses, whose futures are decided in general elections. The CEOs are professionals, highly trained individuals who can “make it anywhere”, so they have no need to sacrifice the integrity and ethics of the class. But it is not surprising that there can be some erosion of those qualities as we go from public, to quasi-public, to private.
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a study of the potential impacts of a project on human health and the natural and cultural environment, and mitigative measures, is prepared under the leadership of a single professional or group of professionals. The NEAC reviews EIAs and advises the Department of the Environment (DOE), which is not insulated from influence from the political leaders of the day.
Waterloo has alleged that environmental professionals at the NEAC offered to be bribed; charged that members of the Tribunal, which the GoB set up to hear Waterloo’s appeal of the DOE decision to deny its cruise tourism port proposal, are not suitable to hear said appeal; and has accused environmental NGOs of “deafening silence” in respect to another port proposal, Port of Magical Belize, which has received the clearance that Waterloo sought.
The Ashcroft group determined that the Port of Belize Ltd. (PBL), presently exclusively a cargo port, could not feasibly be improved without adding a cruise port, and doesn’t accept that the NEAC disapproval should stop the project. Belize’s leaders know Lord Ashcroft well, having done business with him for more than two decades. When an Ashcroft company controlled BTL, it did not accept that the legally constituted Public Utilities Commission had the capacity to be involved in determining rates for telephone subscribers.
Lord Ashcroft is a big investor in Belize, and with his vast resources he can hire “experts” to scrutinize and report on the doings of our political and professional class. The findings of his “experts” — which opposition parties routinely latch on to when they damn the government — can’t be ignored. But he can’t be the judge here.
The NEAC has been called on to give expert advice on four notable cruise port proposals in the last decade or so, and it has given the green light to three of them —Harvest Caye, Port Coral, and Port of Magical Belize — and pronounced negatively on one, the Waterloo Cruise Port proposal.
Looking at the cruise ports/port proposals strictly from an environmental perspective, the consensus is that of the four, the Harvest Cay cruise port presented the least danger to the environment. The 2013 EIA for Harvest Caye said that about a million cubic meters of material would be excavated to create a channel to the island, and that the bulk of the spoils would be used to fill the island and create beaches. The environmentalists determined that the dredging could be done with minimal harm to the environment.
The 2006 EIA for Port Coral, which was updated in 2013, discussed the filling of a large acreage on the Drowned Cays, which are located near to some of the most productive lobster fishing grounds in the country; the creation of an 8.6-km access channel much closer to the Barrier Reef than the channels proposed by Waterloo and Port Magical; and the construction of causeways to link the project with Belize City. Port Coral claimed that the access channel, which calls for less dredging than the channels proposed by Waterloo and Port Magical, was necessary because it would cut the travel time of cruise ships to and from Port Coral considerably, by 2 hours or more.
It’s possible that the Waterloo group got its belief that it would be allowed to dump about 6 or 7 million cubic meters of dredge spoils between English Cay and the Turneffe Atoll, on seeing the environmental clearance for the Port Coral access channel. The environmentalists thought that Waterloo’s proposal was preposterous and dangerous. But the alternative for Waterloo, dumping the dredged material onshore and near shore of the project site, had too much potential, even in a minimal storm, to clog the sewer lagoon that serves Belize City. Other big negatives for this proposal are the potential harm the extensive dredging (6.5 million cubic meters) could cause to the inner reef, the greater exposure of Belize City in a hurricane as a result of a much deepened channel, and the unattractiveness of a sewer lagoon near a cruise tourism port.
Port of Magical Belize, which calls for more extensive dredging than Waterloo, received environmental clearance because it is in a less sensitive location than Waterloo. There is concern that a 1,400-meter long artificial peninsula (island) the developers intend to make from the spoils extracted to create an access channel could impede the passage of manatees along the coast. It isn’t known if/how PBL’s 800- meter long trestle and 67-meter long pier head, and activities at that port, have affected the passage of the manatees, but manatee experts are uneasy about an actual peninsula extending nearly a mile out from the coast.
There are considerations other than the physical environment, and these include the number of cruise tourists our country can attract and entertain, and our share of the economic benefits. On the matter of returns for the country, no completely objective report on Harvest Caye has been presented, but it has been described as a giveaway. The Definitive Agreement signed by former UDP government minister, Erwin Contreras for Port Magical has been described as an even more shocking giveaway and it has been condemned by members of the past government and the present one. Indeed, the economic aspects of the Port Magical proposal are wanting, and might yet lead to its grounding. But on the matter of the accusation that the NEAC was biased in its appraisal of the environmental aspects of the project, that doesn’t hold.