Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­reespon­dent

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has de­fend­ed its process for han­dling the pro­posed Mar­riott Ho­tel project at Rocky Point, To­ba­go, say­ing it had the best in­ter­est of the en­vi­ron­ment at heart.

The Rocky Point project is a ho­tel and vil­la de­vel­op­ment planned by Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed. It will be built on about 28 acres of land near Mt Irvine.

The project in­cludes a 200-room Mar­riott ho­tel, town­hous­es, vil­las, restau­rants, bars, shops, and a spa. The com­pa­ny said it will bring jobs and boost tourism on the is­land.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the EMA said it is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, fol­low­ing a news re­port on Mon­day in which stake­hold­ers raised con­cerns about trans­paren­cy at the sec­ond pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on Ju­ly 9. These con­cerns in­clude the threat of runoff to Buc­coo Reef, the re­moval of manchi­neel trees used by nest­ing tur­tles, and un­cer­tain­ty over waste­water treat­ment.

In its re­sponse, the EMA said two of its of­fi­cers were present at the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. How­ev­er, it said, “Their role was to ob­serve and en­sure that the en­gage­ment fol­lowed the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures un­der the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) process.”

Not­ing the de­vel­op­er ap­plied for Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC), the EMA said, “The CEC process is de­signed to be trans­par­ent, ac­count­able, and fa­cil­i­ta­tive.”

Since Rocky Point is in a sen­si­tive area, the EMA said it re­quired sev­er­al de­tailed man­age­ment plans to guide how the de­vel­op­er would re­duce or pre­vent harm to the en­vi­ron­ment and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

“These plans are es­sen­tial to guide how po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial im­pacts will be avoid­ed, min­imised, or mit­i­gat­ed and are nec­es­sary to pro­tect To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al as­sets,” the EMA stat­ed.