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If you are to look at the difference between the locals footprint on the island, and the developer's proposed footprint on the island, the difference is enormous.
 Andrew Ross of the Montego Bay Marine Trust Park writes to me in the public forum of the coral list group. He says, "In the longer term, Erik, you will need to look at how his grass is draining...not over the grass, but through it and into the ground. In Montego Bay, we are seeing enormous blooms of the green algae Chaetomorpha, beginning a few weeks after the beginning of the summer rains in the vicinity of these golf courses, likely responding to fertilizers coming in from underground drainages. If you've not got a complete, impermeable barrier underneath your grass collecting your fertilized irrigation water, it will go into the underlying sand-gravel-water table and onto your reef and corals...some 45 feet away."
In fact, the ground layer of Guana Cay is the most porous rock you can imagine. It is composed almost entirely of hardened limestone. It is expected that the wastes, fertilizers, drainage and water runoff will be seeping into the coral reef almost immediately.
All of this, once the golf course is built, will be dangerous. But the construction phase itself - terraforming the land and creating huge structures - marina, over 500 dwelling structures, tennis courts, spas, restaurants and the course itself - will itself drastically harm the reef. In the developer's EIA, they state,
"Construction activities, by their very nature, create many sources of potential pollutants, especially to near shore marine waters. Accelerated erosion and sedimentation caused by land disturbing activities is one of the major pollution problems caused by construction."
Later, the developer's EIA notes the dangers of "...increased sediment run-off and erosion due to large-scale vegetation loss in the construction phase of the development."
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Great Guana Cay is a thin, six mile island in the Northern Bahamas.
The island's inhabitants, who settled here 200 years ago, are employed in fishing and cottage industry tourism.
The island's coral reef is of international importance as one of the most intact surviving elkhorn/staghorn coral communities in the world.
The inhabitants began fighting tooth and nail to save their island's coral reef and mangroves from destruction after hearing of plans for a golf megadevelopment on their tiny barrier reef island.
Hundreds of the world's most revered coral reef scientists and marine ecologists, as well as almost every single Bahamian environmental organization, have banded together to try to stop the Baker's Bay Golf & Ocean Club (Discovery Land Company) from realizing completion.
The proposed 585 unit, 180 slip marina, tennis courts, hotel, destination spa and championship golf course were pushed through the Bahamian central government with no local consent and without proper permits in a land grab (including of local public land designated for use by Bahamians) of unbelievable proportion. In one of the most amazing and unique environmental stories in history, the islanders have brought the developer, and the Bahamian government, to task. The small island is now waging a bitter legal battle with the government and the developers.
Rise Up Sweet Island compiles the viewpoints of the Bahamian and international marine conservation community and presents documents, evidence and history for all interested parties.
Notes from the Road is a travelogue which covers environmental and cultural issues around North America, the Caribbean and Europe. |
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| Thousands of coral scientists, conservationists and environmentalists have publicly voiced support for the locals of Great Guana Cay, including scientists at the Sierra Club, University of Miami, Greenpeace, Center for Biological Diversity, Global Coral Reef Alliance and more. |
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| No independent scientists or conservation groups support the position of Baker's Bay Club. |
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