Since April of last year there has been a campaign in the south from private tourism interests who are trying to resist multinational cruise company Norewegian Cruise Line from building a port to call near to the Placencia peninsula.
The campaign has been creative, but after months of small encounters between the two, both entities met under one roof in Independence Village for a public consultation meeting for the Environmental Impact Assessment on the proposed port to be built on Harvest Caye.
NCL is at the final stages to getting the project off the ground, but those private interests and concerned environmentalists are determined to fight to the very end. 7News was embedded in that meeting last night where sparks flew. Daniel Ortiz has this report:
Daniel Ortiz reporting
About 320 residents of the South gathered at the Independence High School Auditorium last night. They listened intently to the presentations made by the representatives of Norwegian Cruise Line and their environmental consultant.
They were polite, waiting for the opportune moment where they could address the developer, and as soon as they could, the simmering undercurrent of opposition took off. Even though NCL was patient with each and every speaker, they truly didn't get much love from the crowd gathered. The first resident to approach the mic wasted no time:
Resident
"I consider this agreement unconstitutional. Why, because no other Belizean in here has the opportunity to do what this company intends to do."
The residents got up one by one boldly facing the experts asking their different questions, but it was not until the President of the BTIA Placencia took the mic, that the meeting kicked up to another notch. The simmer in the crowd transformed to a slow burn.
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"I have a number of questions but first I would like to offer some congratulations and those congratulations go to the person or persons who dreamt up the title for this project to call it a nature park. How on earth do you dredge a million cubic yards of fill, replenish a beach and dare call it a nature park. I mean congratulations because its brilliant. I don't know if it was Pepe or Mr. Darley or maybe one of the Arguelles brothers, but I really have to congratulate you and the perversion of the English language because it's absolutely brilliant. This is a cruise port; it's not a nature park. Cockscomb is a nature park, Guanacaste is a nature park, Bladden is a nature park, Harvest Caye is certainly not a nature park and certainly not after you get through with it."
And then the two personalities on either side of this developments, who have been advancing their agendas, trying to undercut the other's progress, went head to head.
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"Someone, again I don't know which person it was talked about 600 - 1,000 jobs; the EIA I believe refers to 250 direct jobs on the island. I am not talking about these jobs on aboard ship. That is ridiculous. If you need labor for ships, you get labor for ships; One thing has nothing to do with the another. Unless the people from NCL are going to say that if we turn down this proposal for a port you are going to fire all the Belizeans that you hired, is that what you are saying Mr. Darley?"
Hugh Darley, Project Director - NCL harvest Caye
"I am sorry, say that again please?"
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"There is no tie between how many Belizeans you happen to hire to work on ships and anything about this cruise port."
Hugh Darley, Project Director - NCL harvest Caye
"No actually what we were hoping to do is train locals so that Belizeans can be the operators of the island. We would rather not bring Filipinos or Europeans to come and operate the island."
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"How on earth are you going to bring Filipinos to operate the island? We have laws about that Mr. Darley. Belize is for the people who live here."
That back and forth went on for some time, and then, the philosophies of the opposing tourism interests started to come out:
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"Let's talk about what this cruise port is really about. It's about money okay, pure and simple. This is all about money. The people at this head table and the people who are currently employed by NCL to push this project on Belize, they are here to get paid okay. You are not here because you love Belize. These Belizeans who are going to sell things on the island, are you going to give them free rent? In others words, can they come and sell their crafts for free or are you going to make them rent kiosks like you do every other place. This is business."
Hugh Darley, Project Director - NCL harvest Caye
"Well we are not going to make anybody do anything. There will be a business opportunity for them to come to the island as they do maybe in your village or wherever you are from. The commercial value of the project is definitely about money. I think that most people here are probably in the business of actually making money."
Majority of the speakers raised emotional concerns, which seemed to make the government technicians impatient. They were often curt with speakers, reminding that the EIA Consultation was about the scientific research and the environmental effects. That led to exchanges like this one:
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"The original MOU for this project called for two ships and it so happens that the committee that was examining this look at the two ships and said no we can't have two ships."
Mr. Franco, Organizer
"Mr. Krohn, can you speak about the environmental impact assessment report. The MOU has no bearing on what we are here tonight. Can you stick to the technical aspect of the study."
Stewart Krohn - President, BTIA Placencia
"Mr. Franco it has every bearing."
Mr. Franco, Organizer
"It's not the forum here for that. We are here to listen to EIA from a technical perspective. Can you be very specific and precise, so that we can proceed? We have several behind you that we would like to give an opportunity as well."
Resident
"This is a multi-national company that's hard to challenge by our local tour operators. Look at Chukka and FECTAB in Belize City, that's going to happen here."
Resident
"This topic of the cruise ship comes up all the time and all my guests say they do not want to come into the area when you have mass cruise tourism. having such large number of people who are only in for a few hours going to the sites is not something they are interested in dealing with and I have a lot of guests saying they don't want to come back."
It continued like that for another hour or so, and then a resident from Independence village took the mic and pointed out all the scientific flaws in the EIA study. She poured over almost 400 pages of information, and she cited the environmental information for the project as being poor because of outdated data, inconsistent or incomplete testing results, omitted data, and inadequate risk mitigation mechanisms.
Resident
"Please don't not come and disrespect us with an EIA that I don't know if you thought we were not going to read it but we did and so I did not like it any at all because really and truly if you are going to present data to somebody and tell them that you want them to accept this, please, come to the consultation and accept this and say yes go ahead with the project, you agree, then give us the correct thing."
"The EIA starts talks about one thing in the first part and then addresses something else in the latter part, so it becomes confusing for people and for myself."
Jose Pepe Garcia - Environmental Consultant
"Maybe there was mistake, but nothing too serious. Hold on, let me explain."
And he did, but by that time, the mood in response to the scientific, technical jargon had already shifted against NCL.
Resident
"We could go back and forth with things that I read in the EIA. I understand that there are many people behind me, but just for future references, for the people who wrote the EIA, its very disrespectful that you will come and give me these kinds of things, not only me but my community and my country and the yet DOE or the NIAC, whoever will say yes and stamp the green light and go ahead with it. My goodness, if I can pick up on some of these things I would appreciate if people on the NIAC would also pick up on these things and say take this from me. I was a teacher and when my students came to me with things that I did not like because I knew they could do better, I sent them back with it - go and do it better for me. So I would appreciate next time you write a better EIA."
That set the tone, and it gave the gathering fair grounds to oppose the NCL project outright in the presence of the Department of the Environment.
Resident
"Because of the difficulty in interpreting the accuracy of the EIA and looking at the situation down here and the national tourism master plan for no big cruise ships in southern Belize, I will categorically reject at the NIAC the NCL project."
David Almendarez - Member, FECTAB
"I came in here and I saw Mr. Pepe doing the EIA report very low tone, very low key, easy to miss a couple things - how come you came here with an EIA that's not ready for the people and have so many faults."
Melvin Hulse
"Don't get confuse with the fact that you want a project to automatically assume that anybody in any country will say that they like the project and it will help us, so you are going to be mediocre and careless in how you are going to develop it. That EIA, I just briefly look through it and there is nothing specific, and you are saying that you all will discuss it later and take our concerns. Basically they are looking to step it so that the Norwegian group - they are a big reputable company and 50 million will not get the job done. They are not going to get the job done dredging at that depth - that will not happen. They need more money and I hope they are not dead raise."
Since the EIA has so many errors and flaws in it, NCL says that it intends to transcribe the entire consultation meeting, and they will redraft it with all the recommendations suggested, and whatever data that was missing, erroneous or unclear will be fixed.
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