This is all getting a little too weird.

Last week, Government announced that the new hospital would be built in the Botanical Gardens. The reasons were reasonably straightforward. It would take less time than building on the current site while trying to keep the current King Edward VII Memorial Hospital going and it would be cheaper. Time and money 1 Trees 0.

The decision sparked an outcry from environmentalists and from Premier Alex Scott?s personally appointed Sustainable Development Roundtable, who rightly noted that the decision flew in the face of its recommendations contained in the draft document that has now been the subject of five public meetings held under Government auspices. That the Roundtable?s members have not resigned must be a testament to their forbearance, although not, perhaps, to their principles.

At the latest of the sustainable development meetings, the Premier attempted to put a gloss on the decision, announcing on Wednesday night that ?greenery? from the Botanical Gardens would be incorporated into the building. He then added: ?You won?t just walk up to the door and the green stops. It may go into the building. If there?s a tree that needs sustaining, you may find that tree next to your hospital bed in the future.?

Mr. Scott has a well developed sense of humour, and the charitable instinct would be to dismiss Mr. Scott?s comments as a rather feeble joke. But by all accounts, he was serious. Again, to be charitable, one would think that Mr. Scott did not mean that the tree would actually be next to the bed, but outside the window, perhaps in a courtyard. That?s because it does not take a brain surgeon to know that you can?t put a growing tree in a hospital ward.

But the reality is that trying to save a tree here and garden there will send the cost of this already expensive project through the roof. Of course, money is no object to this Government, as Mr. Scott demonstrated when he had oversight of the Berkeley project, but the reason for placing the hospital at the Botanical Gardens was for reasons of cost and time, not to sustain trees and plants.

The best way to do the latter would be to leave the park alone. Mr. Scott rightly noted that there have been ?meetings after meetings? on the project, and that the time for a decision had come.

And, as has been noted before, there was no easy choice to be made. But that does not remove the fact that, as Health Minister Patrice Minors herself admitted, the public consensus was in favour of building on the current site even though it would cost more.

The deeper problem, as the Sustainable Development Roundtable noted, is that the public does not even know if the drawings and studies that one would have expect to be done have been done, and if they have, the public certainly has not seen them. All the public saw last year were some artist?s impressions of ?conceptual drawings? at the different proposed sites and it is not even known if these are still valid. No one will even say how many storeys the building will have.

Certainly, there has been no information on whether environmental impact studies have been done, what changes will be needed for roads, parking and the like, let alone the associated costs of relocating the Ministry of the Environment buildings now in the park. Worse, it is not at all clear that the $500 million price tag is the total price. That?s because the plans presented to the public last year envisaged the new hospital being only an acute care hospital and not a chronic care facility.

Last year, the idea was to build satellite clinics in the East and West Ends and at the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Centre (which will also be redeveloped) to cater to patients now in the extended care wards and to patients who needed medical attention but who were not emergencies. No one knows how much all of that will cost or even where they will go.

Finally, the Government?s record is such that few people believe that the current hospital site will revert to park land when it is no longer needed. Leaving aside the nightmarish problems of turning buildings, incinerators and parking lots into gardens and parkland, the expectation is that it just won?t happen. In a decade, a new crisis of some sort will demand that it be used for homes, offices, rest homes or something else.

The Premier?s desperate attempt to provide a sop to those who care about the Island?s environment on Wednesday night only demonstrates what a poor decision this was to start with. It needs to be rethought, and quickly.