The Ministry of Works and Engineering has requested a grant to conduct a study on how much it will cost to clean up the former US Baselands.

After the 2004/05 Budget, almost the entire windfall Bermuda received when the US Government pulled out of the baselands has been spent ? and none of it on environmental clean-up.

?The $11 million (Bermuda received in remuneration was not our call,? said Works and Engineering permanent secretary Dr. Derrick Binns yesterday. ?That was a collective Government call.?

Development by the Bermuda Land Development Company at Southside continues, Dr. Binns and Works and Engineering Minister Ashfield DeVent said yesterday.

As for the land at Morgan?s Point, they said the Ministry is still assessing their options.

A grant would allow the Ministry to commission a UK study on the environmental damage to the Baselands after years of US occupation. A timeframe for the study depends on if the grant request is approved, said Dr. Binns.

Shadow Works and Engineering Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin said in last year?s Budget Reply: ?The Opposition highlighted that... not once in five years has the Smith Government presented a comprehensive plan to deal with the increasingly narrow economic base, and to meet other broad challenges that will inevitably test Bermuda?s economic viability, including ? among other things ? the bill for the toxic waste remediation at the baselands.?

In 1996 an American environmental services company estimated the cost would be $65 million.