Premier Dr. Ewart Brown's revelation in this week's Royal Gazette that the public will most likely foot the bill for any kind of clean-up at Morgan's Point to enable a land swap to take place with the developers of the controversial Southlands property will inevitably draw mixed emotions.

On the one hand, the use of the "brownfield" former Naval Annex instead of Southlands would be welcome. But it seems invidious that the taxpayer should subsidise the developers to enable the Government to get out of a politically sticky situation which is entirely of their own making.

It was the Government which first handed over negotiations with the US over the pollution left at the former Bases to the Foreign Office and then accepted a paltry $11 million payment (which was in theory for the replacement of Longbird Bridge). It was the Government that frittered away that money on all sorts of spending projects that had nothing to do with either the bases or bridges.

And it was the Government, through the Bermuda Land Development Company, that has had responsibility for Morgan' Point for eight years and has done nothing about it, apart from beginning to nibble at the edges of the property for the otherwise estimable Rockaway seniors development, until now.

Now, with environmentalists and residents of sensitive Progressive Labour Party-held seats in Warwick up in arms over Southlands, Morgan's Point seems to be a viable solution both to save the developers' bacon and to restore the PLP's fortunes.

But the price will be the cost of the clean-up, and the public needs to decide it if that price, which will almost certainly be in the tens of millions of dollars, is worth it.