In September, 2001, the UK Overseas Territories, including Bermuda, became signatories to the UK Environment Charter. Following this, the Government of Bermuda pledged to undertake environmental impact assessments prior to approving major projects and to ensure that these EIAs include wide consultation with stakeholders.This pledge resulted in the creation of a Bermuda Planning Guidance document on Environmental Impact Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements, referred to as GN106. An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is a document in which the results of an EIA are presented, and should be submitted to the Department of Planning as part of a planning application. As noted in GN106, it makes both good environmental and business sense for a developer to conduct an EIA, as any issues and potentially expensive mistakes can be discovered early on in the design stage of the development process.In this way, inappropriate designs can be rejected or modified at an early stage, before both time and money have been spent fully developing them. Major port infrastructure, reclamation projects and marinas are all specifically cited in the Bermuda Plan as developments that are likely to require an EIA and EIS.Approval for the new Dockyard cruise ship pier was granted by Cabinet in late 2006 but the commissioning of an EIA was delayed until early 2007, despite an initial start date of April 1, 2007 and Government having known for years that a thorough EIA would be required. The first attempt at the EIA was undertaken by Bermuda Water Consultants (BWC) and a draft EIS was submitted to the Department of Planning on June 26, 2007. A review of this by local stakeholders sparked a unanimous condemnation of the document as woefully inadequate and led Dame Jennifer Smith, Chairwoman of the Historic Wrecks Authority, to write to the Department of Tourism and Transport urging more research and consultation due to the discovery of an “historic wreck” directly underneath a planned berth.The Department of Planning subsequently requested a number of changes and additions and tried to accommodate the project by considering it in two phases. Planning approval for Phase 1 (construction of the pier) was granted on October 17, 2007, while Phase 2 (to include widening the North Arm Bridge and construction of the terminal building, seasonal ferry docking area, and ground transportation area, including land reclamation and sea wall construction) would require further environmental work before approval could be granted.A “scoping” exercise, designed to establish the essential content and scale of an EIA, was begun but apparently never completed and, in March, 2008, fearing that Phase 2 would not be completed in time for the cruise ship season, Government took the decision to forego the normal planning and stakeholder review process and issue a Special Development Order (SDO). It is BEST’s understanding that, under extreme political pressure, the planners accepted a sub-standard EIA and a suitable EIA was never conducted. The final EIA document was furthermore never subjected to a routine independent review, perhaps to avoid professional embarrassment.According to the PLP website, as certain legal requirements for the SDO could not be met in time, the work went ahead without it and a retroactive planning application for the Phase 2 works of the new cruise pier and terminal building was filed in January, 2009. As noted in the Minutes from the March 25, 2009 Development Applications Board (DAB) Meeting, the Board was “disappointed with the applicant’s blatant disregard for the planning process”. In addition, the DAB observed that the applicant’s disregard for its Advice Note that accompanied the Phase 1 approval resulted in an EIS “which did not undertake the full range of scientific studies required”.Unfortunately, as the work on the cruise ship pier and terminal had already been carried out, the DAB had little choice but to approve the application despite concerns over the real impact of operating the facility. As a condition of the approval, a requirement was made for an Interim Monitoring Program for air quality, water quality and marine ecology to be filed and approved by the DAB prior to the issuance of a Certificate of Use and Occupancy, and this was to be replaced by a Long Term Monitoring Program two months prior to its completion.The DAB included several stipulations as to how these programs must be prepared and their approval of the application was “largely based on the fact that such a document is to be filed, reviewed and approved.” The Department of Environmental Protection undertook to manage the monitoring with funding to come from the Ministry of Tourism and Transport. Three contractors are currently working on the various components of the interim programme and any long-term programme will not be finalised until findings of the interim studies are analysed.Substandard EIA Costly Errors at –Taxpayers’ ExpenseAs per the Department of Planning’s documentation on Environmental Impact Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements (GN106), “it is essential that the [Development Applications] Board has all the pertinent information relating to a proposed development to ensure that a development does not have any adverse impacts on the natural, human or built environments of a site or its surrounding area, and to ensure that any such impacts are reduced and appropriately mitigated.”Without such information, Bermuda’s commitment to the UK Environment Charter cannot be met and appropriate mitigation cannot occur. This is exemplified by the $3.7m spent to protect pregnant dolphins at Dolphin Quest from harm during the construction phase of the Dockyard cruise pier project. By the time Dolphin Quest was informed that the project was going ahead, they already had pregnant dolphins at a fairly advanced stage of gestation.In the opinion of the expert veterinary input, to move them would likely have caused spontaneous abortion or death of the mother. These pregnancies were planned, however, and formed part of a fairly high profile artificial insemination experiment. Had a proper EIA been conducted, the plans for these pregnancies would have been known well in advance and Government could have prevented or delayed the insemination, thus avoiding this additional $3.7m of unforeseen expense.In summary, had an appropriate and timely EIA been carried out, the process would have gone much more smoothly and various costly and time-consuming errors could have been avoided. As examples, the wreck could have been dealt with in advance, the dolphins could have posed no issue, permitting could have been done in a single phase, and all aspects of the project could have been properly identified and therefore budgeted for adequately.Importantly, the total revenue to the local economy that would have been lost if the second cruise pier and terminal building had been unable to open for the 2009 season was estimated at $16 million, much of which would have gone directly to Government in the form of cabin tax. A great deal of the $30 million in cost overruns, paid out of the public purse, resulted from a misguided attempt to push the project through without adhering to proper procedures. The net benefit to the taxpayer would therefore have been far greater had a proper EIA been conducted, even if this had meant delaying the opening of the second cruise pier to the 2010 season.ConclusionsGovernment is now actively planning to build a large marina in the West End, in what has been identified as one of the island’s most environmentally-sensitive marine areas. The proposed Cross Island Marina has caused much concern within the environmental community. In order to avoid significant environmental damage and a repeat of wasted public funds due to inadequate expert support, the Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) strongly recommends that a proper EIA process be strictly followed for the proposed marina as well as any future projects requiring an EIS under planning guidelines.Given the considerable environmental sensitivity of the area proposed for the Cross Island Marina, we anticipate that an appropriate EIA would provide indisputable evidence that the land reclamation and marina construction proposed should not take place at this site. The specific environmental issues associated with the proposed Cross Island Marina, along with recommendations for EIA in Bermuda, will be discussed in Part 2 of this research, to be published in tomorrow’s Royal Gazette.