The shocking images of pollution at Morgan's Point in the Mid-Ocean News on April 23 must have been as welcome at the Cabinet Office as the photos of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq were at the White House. Issues of this magnitude are much easier for politicians to deal with when the evidence is hidden behind locked fences or underground caves than on the front page of a newspaper.

Bermuda now faces two costly messes, one we inherited and one very much of our own creation.

When the US vacated the Baselands we uncovered a huge environmental disaster in our sensitive underground caves, threatening the water table and rendering a huge area of prime real estate undevelopable. That's the mess we inherited.

The subsequent handling of the negotiations with the US is the mess our Government created. The decision in 2002 to end negotiations and accept a paltry $11 million final settlement for the termination of the lease was an error of monumental proportions. It's likely to qualify as the most boneheaded decision taken by a Bermuda Government.

That's $11 million for an estimated $60 million problem. Compounding the error, we heard in the recent budget that eight of the 11 million has been earmarked for all sorts of non-related projects, after already spending $3 million to service the swing bridge.

So where did the problem we created begin? It started with the fateful decision in 1999 to withdraw from negotiations with the US and ask the UK to represent us. Why our policy makers thought it in our best interests to abdicate their responsibility as our elected representatives and ask someone else to negotiate on our behalf, someone whose priority was to make the issue go away, promises to be one of the most unnecessarily expensive decisions ever made.

The UK had no vested interest in achieving a favourable settlement, and they were almost certainly motivated by a desire to end the negotiations quickly. It was na?ve of our Government to say the least, to expect the UK to expend valuable political capital with their closest ally for an environmental clean-up in their prosperous little overseas colony.

So where did the $60 million estimate come from? In 1998 the UBP Government conducted a study which put the price tag at $60 million and that was apparently what they were holding out for before being relegated to the Opposition benches in November.

It's a safe bet that the $60 million estimate is low, and an even safer bet that the longer we delay the remediation, the higher that figure will go. Doubling that isn't unreasonable, particularly as Bermuda capital projects go. We're looking at a decision that will likely cost $100 million, around 15 percent of our 2004 budget. Compare that to the US's ability to write a check for one hundred million out of their almost two trillion dollar 2005 budget, and it becomes clear just how terrible a decision that was. The Bermuda taxpayers are going to receive a very large bill in the not too distant future.

So what's our Government doing? They're awaiting yet another report, to replace the one already completed pre-1998. This can only be described as a delaying tactic by politicians wanting to push the problem further into the future, undoubtedly increasing the health risk and economic cost.

The Government continues to hope that money will materialise from some benevolent source other than the Bermuda taxpayer.

This is in fact an implicit admission that the settlement is inadequate and overly burdensome. Just who Minister De Vent expects to provide assistance so that the remediation “would not have to be funded completely from the Bermuda public purse” is puzzling.

With the passing of the US Bases (Termination of Agreement) Act in 2002 the Government completely absolved the US of any responsibility, losing any leverage for future negotiations. Surely we aren't now going to approach the UK, the party we asked to negotiate on our behalf, and ask them to pony up the cash.

This problem is now ours solely to resolve and the financial burden is entirely of our own making.