Puerto Azul Star vacation dream for Travolta and nightmare for environmentalists Celebrities and Ministers Erwin Contreras and Manuel Heredia show support at the Cannes Film Festival in France for the Puerto Azul Project. Blue Hole Natural Monument and Half Moon Caye Natural Monument are both located within Light House Reef Atoll. Both sites are designated as two of the seven components that makes up the ‘Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System’—Belize’s World Heritage Site. These two sites are located just south of a proposed development, Puerto Azul. The land documents show that in 2005 under Natural Resource Minister John Briceño, a lease was given to Northern Caye Two via Barrow and Williams. Now that the land has been sold, Puerto Azul would occupy nine hundred and sixty point two acres of Northern Two Caye and Sanborn Cayes. Eleven hotels would be built on Sandbore alone, with a total of seven hundred units of living space. Dredging may also be necessary for a new airport. It is a concern for all environmentalists including Healthy Reefs for Healthy People. Roberto Pott, Belize Coordinator, Healthy Reefs for Healthy People “Well the caye has a lot of fringing reef coming right off Northern Two Caye. From what we understand there is also plans to develop Sanborn Caye and for anybody who knows Lighthouse Reeef, that has the highest turtle nesting density for all of Lighthouse Reef. Northern Two Caye, now is only one of two cayes with mangroves. So you have only five cayes on Lighthouse Reef and you have one caye that we think will be shredded to pieces by a huge marina, a mega marina. All of this is speculation now because we haven’t seen the proposal, it hasn’t been shared with the public and we have to wait until that is done.” Jose Sanchez “At least the designs that I’ve seen, it calls for a very massive complex. It seems there are several hotels on the island, it seems a lot of infrastructure. Is pollution an issue with large development in this proposed area?” Roberto Pott “Well even before the pollution, they are shredding all the mangrove so we lose allt he nursery habitat for all the fishes that depend on that one of two cayes out at Lighthouse Reef. So when you look at it, you will end up losing commercial species. We have one of the largest Nassau grouper spawning aggregation in Belize just outside of Sanborn. So the loss of mangroves, will translate into loss of fish. Not only fish for commercial consumption, but the parrot fish that depend on that nursery habitat to grow their offsprings into juveniles then go back out to the reef to keep the reef clean and healthy.” Puerto Azul is also designed to accommodate a thousand guests and two thousand employees. It’s a beautiful layout that even boasts an underwater laboratory for scientific study. But the Blue Hole Natural Monument is only 8 miles south, and Half Moon Caye is 16 miles South East of Northern Two and Sandbore’s fantasy called Puerto Azul. Marine Scientist, Robin Ramdeen, has seen similar proposed developments in her home country, Trinidad. Jose Sanchez “How much does dredging, how much does the development, waste material; in your view, what would be your concerns?” Robin Ramdeen, Marine Scientist “Reefs globally are very stressed; I can’t recall the exact statistics, but because of climate change and the rising temperature, reefs are not in a good condition by any means. And so the last stress that we can give to those reefs as possible would be batter. So silting the reef is not good for the coral polyps; they need sunlight to be able to do their thing. And mangroves…mangroves are the nurseries for our fishes which we need for food. So at what cost should this development go through? Can we eat this development? Can we even access it? are locals allowed to go there. Is the stress something for tourists to come in and also we need to consider the burden that those tourists have on the fisheries as well. And so if we destroy them, we are setting ourselves up for disaster.” Roberto Pott “I’m not impressed with engineers who say that it can be done; tha tit can be mitigated. We’ve seen cases in the Caribbean where marinas are promised and the marinas aren’t delivered. We have a proposed port right out in Port Loyola. We started to dump and then it is left there as an eye-sore. So as a community, we are willing to make compromises, but if you don’t deliver on your side, then we are left holding the bag. And it is the people of Belize, it is the government that has to do the cleanup, it is the people of Belize who has to pay. The developers don’t pay; they walk away.” One of the nearby islands also boasts a turtle nestling site, a beauty for tourists and Belizeans to enjoy. An Environmental Impact Assessment is underway but can Belize’s reef sustain the onslaught of development? Advocacy Program Manager, Belize Audubon Society “The project is rather massive. It is a caye of over nine hundred acres; it has eleven hotels according to the proposal, fashion centers, restaurants, a downtown area. So it is a rather big project. And at full capacity, will have about three thousand persons on the island at one time. Our position is that it is too large and it may need to be scoped, brought down, and downsized. There are components of the project that certainly won’t do; it is clashing with our environment. Example the over the water airstrip that they propose, the island for solid waste management and there is also an underwater marine laboratory. There is a marina also that will require some dredging.” SHANE YOUNG Shane Young, Marine Protected Areas Manager, Belize Audubon “What we need to understand is that those two protected areas are components of the World Heritage Site…two out of the seven that makes up the World Heritage Site. In terms of development at Northern Two Cayes, there will be some impact in terms of the fishing industry. We are talking about massive dredging if that is the case. Lighthouse Reef Atoll on a whole has a healthy sea grass bed and if silt and sedimentation is to happen due to dredging, definitely it will have an impact on the sea grass bed. We all know basic ecology that the sea grass provides nursery grounds for the fishery and especially the commercial conch. Lighthouse Reef has a healthy conch population and definitely there will be some impact to the fishing industry. In terms of the mangrove ecosystem, Lighthouse Reef Atoll has five islands, five main cayes and out of those five, you have two that comprises of mangrove ecosystem. And again if you remove one, there will definitely be an impact on the fishing industry considering that the mangrove provide habitat for the fisheries as well. When you look at it at a tourism stand point, we have stakeholders from San Pedro, Caye Caulker, Placencia, the Turneffe Atoll that depend on the services provided by Blue Hole. Its natural service is that Blue Hole is an icon for Belize and if any sedimentation or silt or massive development is to happen, there will be some devastating impact to the Blue Hole and Halfmoon Caye. Considering that Blue Hole and Halfmoon Caye; they are popular dive sites and if heavy development will occur, what happens in the marine system is that point A affects point B. And considering that Blue Hole and Halfmoon Caye is just south of Northern Two Cayes where the development is proposed to happen, there could be some impact on the reef system within these protected areas.” It is difficult for small boats to navigate the channel, so there is a possibility of the coral reef system been blown up at the northern point of the Light House Reef Atoll, to create a channel way to accommodate vessels to enter the proposed Mariner at Northern 2 Cayes. Running aground and damaging the reef are only some of the risks associated with Puerto Azul development. Advocacy Program Manager, Belize Audubon Society “There are nesting grounds on Sanborn for protected turtles. Our biologist goes out there and gets data on nesting turtles out there.” Jose Sanchez “When you talk aobut two thousand employees and a thousand guests, you have the issue of waste material; just the simple use of soaps. Where does all that go?” Advocacy Program Manager, Belize Audubon Society “Right. It is quite a distance from land. We anticipate that there will be solid waste issues. Again this was a project proposal and we would like to hope that the EIA preparer will advise the developer to size and scale. We want responsible development, sustainable development. We understand that there is a need for investment in the country, but we want that investment to be smart because at the end of the day, some of our more beautiful icon features are the most valuable and the most vulnerable.” Does the availability of jobs outweigh the possible damage to the environment? #puertoazul puertoazulholding/ph/facilities-services.html
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 18:19:10 +0000