An environmental campaigner claims the Jumeirah Southlands resort would be “doomed to failure” due to the erosion of the Island’s coastline.

Stuart Hayward, who is chairman of BEST, said yesterday: “Any beach front construction at Southlands invites disaster for the development itself as well as difficulties for nearby beach front owners.”

However, developer Craig Christensen of Southlands Ltd. said the proposed resort had undergone extensive research using Hurricane Fabian as a model.

“No other property has come under more scrutiny with respect to the protection of the foreshore than Southlands,” he said.

In arguing against the Southlands development, Mr. Hayward referred to a recent article in The New York Times which reported that homes in Siasconset (Sconset), Nantucket, are having to be moved away from the shoreline due to erosion. The south and east coasts are eroded by an average 10 ft each year.

According to the the newspaper, homeowners are also investing $25 million to save their properties from the sea. Residents in the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund are seeking permission to dredge 2.6 million cubic yards of sand from offshore and pump it onto a 3.1 mile stretch of beach.

Erosion of coastlines around the world is expected to worsen as sea levels rise due to global warming.

Mr. Hayward said the situation in Nantucket was an example of why further coastal development on Bermuda should be stopped. He said the stretch of South Shore earmarked for Jumeirah Southlands would suffer the ravages of the ocean, and that a resort on the shoreline, almost at sea level, was “unprecedented”.

“For something like this to get approval would fly in the face of decades of best practice and technical advice in Bermuda,” he said.

“There are several parallels between the Nantucket story and the hotel construction planned for Bermuda’s South Shore at Southlands. It is evident, and Nantucket isn’t the only example, that attempts to convert the dynamic nature of a beach into static man-made structures of any kind are doomed to failure.

“A beach is ever-changing as part of its function. Attempts to prevent that fluidity are an invitation to disaster, either for the local structure, or for nearby beachfronts.”

Earlier this year, the Government’s Advisory Architectural Panel recommended a “full scale environmental impact statement” was needed prior to planning approval. Members were concerned about the amount of construction proposed for the foreshore. But a report has not yet been undertaken.

By requesting a Special Development Order (SDO) from Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield, developers were able to bypass a comprehensive environmental review — and so speed up construction.

According to a Government report, the development would be located on an area of the South Shore deemed at ‘high’ risk of erosion. The ‘Bermuda Coastal Erosion Vulnerability Assessment Final Report’ (2004) also states: “The highest wave heights occur on the South Shore.”

Consultants Smith Warner International (SWI) also prepared coastal protection and development planning guidelines. The recommendations, in November 2004, were based on observations and the aftermath of Hurricane Fabian the year before.

The Government’s State of the Environment Report 2005 says: “SWI’s report entitled ‘Coastal Protection and Development Planning Guidelines for Bermuda’ stresses the importance of establishing appropriate setbacks from the coast for development (based on wave height, storm surge and inundation level calculations), the adoption of a community approach to shoreline defence and the importance of achieving a balance between ensuring the functional integrity of a shoreline defence system and its aesthetics.”

However, Mr. Christensen told The Royal Gazette that Jumeirah Southlands would be constructed with due diligence to the environment.

“We are building above the current cliff face, and our engineers will put in place a properly designed and enforced foreshore protection. In the absence of that, the cliff sides would suffer further damage and storm erosion, so we have extensive engineering to protect the shoreline.”

He said: “For example, you have to secure your reinforcement and armament at the base rock and built up from there. You also need to ensure you have an over-topping so the waves won’t overtop and pull the reinforcement out, which happened 50 percent of the time for smaller reinforcements when Fabian hit.

“Southlands will be entirely protected and safe,” said Mr. Christensen. “We have looked at this extremely carefully because we don’t want to put anyone in harm’s way or put in buildings we thought would be risky.

“We looked at Fabian and used it as a base. This was the strongest hurricane to hit Bermuda’s shores in the last 400 years, bar the 1839 hurricane.

“We are significantly higher than the danger level from a hurricane as strong as Fabian. We have looked at Southlands extremely seriously and will ensure our buildings are engineered carefully, so if people talk about the possibility of a Category Five hurricane, I think Southlands would be of minimal concern.

“Nowhere else has been subjected to a higher degree of level of scrutiny than Southlands.”