Erosion is setting inNovember 28, 2011Dear Sir,I have been a loyal fan of the beauties of nature as well as Bermudians’ kindnesses to strangers in Bermuda since my first visit there in the summer of 1969. Because it was that first visit that lead me to meet up on Elbow Beach with the beautiful woman who ultimately became my wife; and because she too was visiting her wonderful cousins and residents of the Island, I have become a regular traveller to the Island. I am not sure how many times I have visited in the past four decades, but it has to be more than a dozen and less than two dozen. Since my own immediate family, including my mother and father and aunt and uncle, were tourists in Bermuda long before I was, and photographed the Island in the 1940s and 50s, I have a good general idea of its development since then.My wife, Ina, and I just returned from our latest, almost two-week trip to the Island, this past weekend. During that time, we walked, motor-bicycled and drove to points all over the Island, from St George to the old dock and boat yards in Somerset. I was a bit taken aback by all the housing development on the Island since our last trip there four years ago, and particularly the dispute over granting of planning permission to Cabinet Minister Zane DeSilva to build warehouses on environmentally protected land. Bermuda’s rare and amazing environmental areas are to me, and many others, sacred ground.It appears, however, from our observations, that erosion is setting in Island-wide. By erosion, I mean not just the land and the water quality themselves, but the attitudes of some of those living on the Island and the apparent inability of the Island’s leadership to observe what needs to be done to stop this erosion.Symbolic of that erosion is the trash obviously thrown by auto and truck drivers as well as pedestrians along the roads and streets, even near and on beaches, parks and golf courses. Just as disturbing is the state of traffic on the roads. Although pedestrians and bicyclists and runners are naturally free to exercise along narrow roads, probably built in the early 1900s without much change since then, large trucks and buses now regularly threaten walkers’ and cyclists’ very existence as those large vehicles pass them, mostly speeding. Once, while walking along a road, I spotted two trucks moving in opposite directions in the road path I was taking. Immediately, I moved to the side of a wall and put my back up to it. The truck driver on my side, apparently not seeing me, sped past and came so close to hitting my body that I could almost feel the truck’s side rails brushing my stomach.It seems that bad habits die hard. Worse yet, when out of date roads collect more and more car, bus and truck traffic, almost nothing has been done to protect public safety or clean up the road messes left behind.Bermuda is an incredible historical treasure that obviously now needs some keen leadership and public awareness to keep nature’s environment, including the beaches, as clean and as safe as possible. I believe the political leadership, as well as the residents there, need to ask themselves what must be done to make the roads safer, and the Island cleaner from trash and development. The future of treasure island depends upon that!DENNIE WILLIAMSLitchfield, ConnecticutStalled developmentsNovember 22, 2011Dear Sir,Bermuda is certainly in need of an upgrade and new hotel beds. We need to put our workers back to work, and the construction industry is in need of assistance, even with the economy in trouble.We all know it takes years to actually build and get Planning approvals in place, before any new tourists will sleep in ANY NEW additional hotel rooms.Reading the article in The Royal Gazette last week about Rosewood Tuckers Point’s INITIATIVE TO BUILD NEW HOTEL ROOMS, only makes me smile. On the first page, they talk about building new hotel rooms and it sounds great, and then on the second page, it says in three years’ time they might start! What a public relations SHAM.By the time they get Planning approval, get it built, it will actually be five years and for how many actual hotel rooms?Who is going to pay for it when they have publicly announced that the recent SDO was only unlocking some distant future for the over-leveraged resort.Admittedly, we need them now, but what has changed to give them the confidence and resources to build additional units when their occupancy is still at an average yearly 59 percent?HSBC? I do not think so, not until that debt is paid down substantially ... The cost of building is still too great in Bermuda to build new rooms, even in three year’s time. Has six months since the famed shoved-down-our-throats-SDO that was narrowly approved out of desperation, changed the bottom line so quickly? I do not think so.It is dire out there in the hospitality world and building new is still too expensive for any entrepreneur to make a return on any investment.You should give us the real financial picture and stop trying to fool Bermuda.I am also interested in knowing where all the other hotel developments are in their progress?Coral Beach and Horizons, Sonesta Beach, Pink Beach in receivership (Butterfield Bank), Newstead in receivership (Butterfield Bank), The Old Club Med, Elbow Beach and that redevelopment, Coco Reef, Ariel Sands, The Reefs upgrade of old 62 hotel rooms recently reported, Munro Beach redevelopment, Morgan’s Point development, The St George on the waterfront in St George’s, Rosewood Tucker’s Point, new hotel rooms, not residential houses.Bermuda needs the TRUTH, but the GOVERNMENT CAN’T handle the truth. These developments were stalled well before Bermuda went into recession.I CAN HANDLE THE TRUTHPaget