By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
A prominent attorney and conservationist is warning that New Providence residents will face “disastrous consequences” if the Government continues to permit development that impacts the islands’ fresh water lenses.
Pericles Maillis, in his written submissions to last week’s public Town Planning consultation on the proposed Adelaide Pines project, said the proposed mixed-use residential, retail, office and light industrial community raised wider issues of public importance given that it will be built on top of a fresh water lens that is between 40-60 feet deep.
Calling for the developer’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to be subjected to a “peer review” by an independent consultant, he argued that previous fresh water resources studies by the Water & Sewerage Corporation - which were “apparently unavailable” to Adelaide Pines’ investors - “show the great south-west [New Providence] fresh water lens as being 40 to 60 feet deep and running directly under the subject wetlands”.
Mr Maillis said he questioned former prime minister, Dr Hubert Minnis, about what he asserted was a policy under the last administration of “procuring and allowing the decommissioning of the remaining great fresh water lenses of New Providence which, I shall be submitting, will have disastrous consequences for the people of New Providence in shifting the water business to machine purified water with all the dangers of equipment failure and rising production costs”.
He subsequently told Tribune Business that the Water & Sewerage Corporation appeared to have “surrendered” all its fresh water lens leases back to the Government, and such land was now being “carved out or given out” for construction and development purposes.
The well-known attorney, who will be a neighbour of Adelaide Pines if it receives the go-ahead from the planning authorities, added: “Fresh water reserves have been sacred from the time I joined the Bahamas National Trust and became a lawyer in the early 1970s. From time immemorial we have always been assured that those deep water lenses covered by forest would be sacred places.”
In his written statement to the Town Planning consultation, Mr Maillis said he “formally objects” to Adelaide Pines’ “proposed design and concept which involves obliteration of the long natural geological wetland feature, which tanks up with rain and closely parallels the main Adelaide Road”. This, he added, is set to be replaced by “a man-made lake” to make way for two extra rows of houses on the development’s western side and multi-family units on the eastern end.
“Besides the very fact of the existence of this wetland as a geological feature, it overlays the great 40-60 foot fresh water lens and drains the surrounding water into it above and below ground. It is the re-charge engine, and a haven for wildlife, as it has its own natural beauty,” Mr Maillis wrote.
“The public will never understand and, if this obliteration of our wetland were to occur, it will be a disgraceful stain on our nation and government, and its departments and agencies, and on the 50-plus or so non-governmental environmental and conservation organisations in the country.”
Asserting that Adelaide Pines would “make a mockery” of The Bahamas’ membership in international biodiversity, wetland and sustainable development if it proceeds as presently envisaged, Mr Maillis added: “If a developer and his lawyers, engineers, architects and business advisors look at a piece of land, see a wetland like this one, sit with calculators and override the Planning and Subdivision Act, the Conservation and Protection of the Physical Landscape of The Bahamas Act and all the conservation ethic and teaching of the past 50 years - to add more lots - then we will save nothing......”
He called for the wetland to be left as it is, adding that the developers still possess 47-plus acres of hard land on which to construct “a man-made pond, but ever so carefully and more friendly than the Florida-style quarry put housing estates”.
Besides Bahamian businessman Robert Myers, who is also the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s principal, Adelaide Pines’ developers are Lyford Cay-based billionaire Joe Lewis and his fellow Albany principals, plus two UK investors, the Huffmans.
Mr Myers, who previously affirmed that Adelaide Pines has already satisfied the Department of Environmental Planning and Protection’s (DEPP) concerns by obtaining its Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) eight months ago, said all questions and queries were answered by that document.
“A lot of time, effort and research went into that plan,” he told Tribune Business. “We didn’t do a ‘cut and paste’ on paper and hope it sticks. A lot of time and thought was put into this to be environmentally conscious and do the right thing. The constructed wetland will not be like Mr Maillis put it, a quarry pit. It will be done in accordance with the environmental consultants.
“I didn’t come up with this. We took on the advice of environmental consultants and designed accordingly. That’s why we got the Certificate of Environmental Clearance.... We’ve got to put our trust in that they’re [Town Planning] going to do the right thing and they do. They’re very good at weighing up the facts from the emotion. People are going to throw all kinds of things out. It doesn’t mean that they’re true.”