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Report
Prepared by:
ESL MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS LTD. 20 West Kings House Road Kingston 10
PPUUBBLLIICC PPRREESSEENNTTAATTIIOONN OOFF TTHHEE EENNVVIIRROONNMMEENNTTAALL IIMMPPAACCTT AASSSSEESSSSMMEENNTT
FFOORR TTHHEE NNEEWW HHAARRBBOOUURR VVIILLLLAAGGEE HHOOUUSSIINNGG
October 2006
Environmental Solutions Ltd.
Submitted to: Gore Developments Ltd. 2c Braemar Avenue, Kingston 10
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................1 2.0 NEPA Requirements..........................................................................................................................................3 3.0 Public Notification.............................................................................................................................................3 4.0 Chairman and Agenda ......................................................................................................................................14 5.0 Attendance ........................................................................................................................................................16 6.0 Presentation .....................................................................................................................................................23 7.0 Verbatim Report ...............................................................................................................................................47
1
1.0 Introduction New Harbour Village is a subdivision being proposed by Gore Developments Ltd. south
of Old Harbour and in close proximity to the Old Harbour exit from Highway 2000
(Figure 1.0). It is bordered by the Old Harbour Bay Main Road on the west, Brampton
Farms to the south, and an existing subdivision called Belmont Park to the north. The
subdivision will contain 845 two bedroom houses on a minimum of 3,500 sq. ft. lots.
Commercial lots will be provided encircling the central open space and will occupy 14 of
the lots. Commercial activities that will be permitted will include small retail businesses.
A large lot (1/2 acre) will be provided for the establishment of a private basic school. The
main entrance will be from the existing Old Harbour Bay Main Road. The main entrance
will be a boulevard of 18 m width, with neighbourhoods on either side or a large
recreational area at the end of the boulevard.
The total land area to be developed is 52.44 ha, with 7.38 ha set aside as active open
spaces which can be used as recreational areas, parks or playing fields. Passive open
spaces will comprise 3.18 ha., giving a total of 10.57 ha of open space.
Gore Developments Ltd. applied to the National Environment and Planning Agency
(NEPA) for a permit for the development. NEPA requested that an Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) be prepared and submitted to the agency, and NEPA also
request that a Public Consultation be held. The Public Consultation was held on
Thursday October 12, 2006, and is the subject of this report.
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Figure 1.0 a: Site Location Map for the New Harbour Village
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2.0 NEPA Requirements The Public Consultation was staged in accordance with the NEPA Guidelines for Public
Consultations, and with constant communication with NEPA representatives, regarding
the selection of a Chairman, list of invitees and notification.
3.0 Public Notification Public notification was given through the following means:
Public Notification #2 in The Friday Gleaner (September 22, 2006) (Figure 3.0a and b)
The Daily Gleaner (Thursday, October 12, 2006) (Figure 3.0c) Flyers (Figure 3.0d) Personalized Invitations (Figure 3.0e and Figure 3.0f) Town Cryer on the afternoon of the event
Additionally, NEPA was requested to post the information on their website.
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Public Notice (#2)
Notice of Completion and Submission of Environmental Impact Assessment Report and staging of Public Presentation
Public Comment Invited
New Harbour Village, Old Harbour, St. Catherine
In accordance with the Natural Resources Conservation (Permits and Licenses) Regulations of the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) Act 1991, the NRCA has exercised its right to require an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the above-captioned development proposal before a decision to issue a Permit or License is made.
This housing development is proposed by Gore Developments Ltd., on 52.44 ha of land located at New Market Pen in St. Catherine, as shown in the map below. It is bordered by the Old Harbour Bay Main Road on the west, Brampton Farms to the south, and an existing subdivision called Belmont Park to the north as shown in the map below. The development will comprise a housing development with 845 two-bedroom houses on a minimum of 3,500 sq. ft. lots, a sewage treatment plant, recreational areas, a small commercial centre and a basic school.
Gore Developments Ltd. has retained Environmental Solutions Ltd. to assist them with conducting the EIA study. A final EIA report of this proposed development has now been completed. A review of this study will be the basis upon which a decision is made by the NRCA to grant a permit and/or license for the development or not. Accordingly, the EIA report needs to be reviewed by the relevant government review agencies and interested members of the public. The report is available for public inspection at the following locations:
• St. Catherine Parish Library, 1 Red Church Street, St. Catherine, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Mondays to Fridays and 10:00 a.m. to 5 :00 p.m. Saturdays
• St. Catherine Parish Council, Emancipation Square, Spanish Town 9:00a.m. to 4:00p.m., Mondays to Fridays
• Gore Developments Ltd., 2c Braemar Avenue, Kingston 5, 9:00a.m. to 4:00p.m., Mondays to Fridays
• Environmental Solutions Ltd., 20 West Kings House Road, Kingston 10, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Mondays to Fridays
• NEPA Documentation Centre, 11 Caledonia Ave., Kingston 5, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Mondays to Fridays.
• The NEPA Web Site at www.nepa.gov.jm If you wish to comment on the EIA report, please do so within 3 weeks of the publication of this notice and address comments to:
Manager, Applications Secretariat Branch National Environment and Planning Agency, 10 Caledonia Ave., Kingston 5 Tel: (816) 754-7540; e-mail: [email protected]
Figure 3.0a: Public Notification #2 for The Friday Gleaner
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PUBLIC PRESENTATION
VENUE: Old Harbour High School 33 South Street Old Harbour
DATE: Thursday, October 12th, 2006 TIME: 6:00 p.m. - 8:00pm The public is invited to participate in the presentation by way of asking questions relating to the
proposed project.
Site Location Map of Proposed Development Site
Date of Notice: September 21, 2006 Date of Newspaper Advert: September 22, 2006
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Figure 3.0b: Public Notification #2 in The Friday Gleaner
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Figure 3.0 c: Advertisement in The Daily Gleaner
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Table 3.0 d: List of Invitees with Sample Invitation Letter
Figure 3.0d: Flyer
NOTIFICATION OF PUBLIC PRESENTATION
There will be a Public Presentation of the Environment Impact Assessment OF: NEW HARBOUR VILLAGE,
OLD HARBOUR, ST. CATHERINE VENUE: Old Harbour High School
33 South Street Old Harbour DATE: Thursday, October 12th, 2006 TIME: 6:00 p.m - 8:00pm The public is invited to participate in the presentation by way of asking questions relating to the proposed project. A copy of the environmental impact assessment report may be consulted at:
St. Catherine Parish Library, 1 Red Church Street, Spanish Town St. Catherine Parish Council Office, Emancipation Square National Environment and Planning Agency, 10 Caledonia Avenue, Kingston 5
www.nepa.gov.jm For further information please contact:
The Offices of the National Environment & Planning Agency (NEPA)
10 Caledonia Avenue, Kingston 5 or their website: www.nepa.gov.jm
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Table 3.0e: Sample Letter of Invitation
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Figure 3.0f: Invitation List
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4.0 Chairman and Agenda The Board of the Old Harbour High School was approached to Chair the Meeting. Dr.
Errol O’Conner, Chairman of the Board agreed to Chair the event. The agenda is given
in Figure 4.0.
Figure 4.0: Agenda for the Meeting
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5.0 Attendance Over one hundred (100) persons were in attendance, and over seventy-five (75) persons
signed the guest book. The signed guest book is given as Table 5.0.
Table 5.0: Guest Book for New Harbour Village Public Presentation
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6.0 Presentation
Environmental Solutions Ltd. prepared and presented the findings of the EIA, in
conjunction with other members of the project team. The Power Point Presentation is
given in Figure 6.0.
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Figure 6.0: Power Point Presentation
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7.0 Verbatim Report The proceedings of the evening were recorded verbatim by a court reporter and are
presented in the text below:
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VERBATIM NOTES OF THE PUBLIC PRESENTATION OF THE FINDINGS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE NEW HARBOUR VILLAGE HELD AT THE OLD HARBOUR
HIGH SCHOOL ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2006 COMMENCING AT 6:15 P.M.
CHAIRMAN: Dr. E. O’Conner - Chairman of the Board of Old
Harbour High School PRESENTER: Dr. M. Williams – Director and Consulting Principal
Manager, Sustainable Development Services Division, Environmental Solutions Ltd.
IN ATTENDANCE FOR THE PROJECT TEAM: Mr. C. Gore Ms. D. Gross Mr. E. Perez Mr. I. Pinchas Ms. T. Rodriguez Mr. G. Campbell Mrs. S. Shirley Mr. B. Richardson Mr. A. Foreman Mr. J. Excell Mr. B. Hay Mr. I. Johnson ALSO IN ATTENDANCE: Invited guests, stakeholders and members of the community
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Chairman: Members of the presenting team, members of the Old
Harbour Bay environment, prospective home owners
welcome to you all this evening at our presentation.
Now, before we continue any further, I would ask that
those with loud cell phones, loud ringing tones could
turn them down, silent or vibrate so that we don’t
disrupt the meeting. We must now acknowledge the
presence of our Member of Parliament Mr. Everald
Warmington (Applause) and our councillor for the Old
Harbour division, hard-working councillor. (Applause)
Let me give you some background as to our meeting
here this evening. The Old Harbour area, it is said, is
one of the fastest growing rural communities in
Jamaica, for several reasons, reasons of the socio-
economic conditions in Kingston and also the fact that
with the advent of Highway 2000, it is clearly easier to
commute to Kingston. Now, Gore Developments, and
we have here Mr. Christopher Gore, could you stand
and let us acknowledge you, Sir. (Applause) Chris
Gore of Gore Developments has purchased a
property to the south of us here, it is a property I know
well, it was previously owned by one of our favourite
sons of Old Harbour Mr. Carl March of blessed
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Chairman: memory. He had owned the major portion of it, he
had told us about 120 acres, its bordered by the Old
Harbour Bay main road on the western border,
Brampton Farms on the southern border and Sharper
Lane on its northern border. Sharper Lane, Belmont
Park Development and farm lots on the eastern
portion. Now, Mr. Gore has proposed a development
for this property but before he can do so he will need
permit from the Government. Now, I was telling you I
had a little experience with the government process
some eight years ago and at the time I was told there
were about 19 agencies involved in the approval
process. Now, I am thinking that in the last few years
the government has sort of streamlined it or tried their
best to streamline it a bit and they have put all three
of these groups under one umbrella. The NRCA, the
Natural Resources Conservation Authority and the
Town Planning Department and the Land Utilization
and Development they have put these three groups
under one umbrella now called NEPA, so Mr. Gore
has to get some permit from NEPA. Now part of this
evening’s proceeding is in its quest to get these
permits NEPA requires an Environmental Impact
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Chairman: Assessment so he has contracted Environmental
Solutions Ltd. of which there is a team of consultants.
The leading one this evening is Dr. Williams, she is
seated at the head table here with me and she has
her team of engineers and so on which she will
introduce later on. Now, this study or the concerns for
this study are quite appropriate because this area has
been traditionally farm lands and Mr. Gore is planning
to bring in, to put in eight hundred and twenty odd
housing solutions and I am told you can average four
persons per house, which means three thousand five
hundred people. I am told we can average about one
to two cars per house so you are looking about eight
hundred to fifteen hundred cars. You put in those on
a hundred and twenty odd acres, it is going to be
stressful for the environment we know, solid waste
disposal, liquid waste disposal, green space, traffic
congestions those sort of problems, the
environmental people are thinking about wild life in
the area and so on. Because the land itself, I am told
falls in a protected area on the south coast. It falls in
the Portland Bight Protected Area so they have a
concern and there are NGO’s non-governmental
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Chairman: organizations who have concerns about these things
and they have an input into it as well. So for all
involved, we should have this sort of discussion this
evening. Recently I went to a play in Kingston and its
called “Jamaica to Rahtid”, it is satiric, it is a comedy
of Jamaican life and it brought out the feature of our
culture of block de road and when people block the
road the next thing they say they are not leaving until
the TV cameras come; and the other thing is we want
justice. Now, a lot of times we don’t think about the
cost of this activity. But I remember years ago one
eventful day I went to my office, because I live close
to my office, and while I was there, there were the gas
riots, gas strike people demonstrating about this
sudden increase, sudden large increase in gas price.
Now, about an hour after I opened, a taxi driver came
in, he says, “Doc this lady calls me, she wants to go
to the maternity ward and I cannot go any further”
and I said, “Boy you have to stop at Dr. O’Connor.”
Now, I am a General Practitioner and I have one
office, a small office alone and this lady come and the
baby won’t wait. At that time I had not delivered a
baby in about ten years I had to fall back on
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Chairman: experiences and deliver, but it ended well. But in
developed countries you cannot obstruct anyone from
their rights and there is what you call the ”de-pocket”
law that means, if you cause something - suppose
this lady baby had died in a developed country she
would sue everybody and those who can pay would
have to pay but somebody would have to pay. So
there is a cost to this sort of thing. So to prevent these
kinds of occurrence and to prevent the growth of this
culture it is best that we have our decision timely
planned and timely executed. And meeting at a forum
such as this, this evening is for us to - for the
developers to consult with the people and let them
understand what is going to be done and the people
put their input into it so we will have harmony at the
end. So this evening then, we are going to have a
meeting which is very important to the developers as
well because they have to present, keep the record of
it and present it to the government also. So all we do
this evening is going to be recorded. First, we will
have a presentation by Dr. Williams and then the
team from Environmental Solutions. We are doing the
impact, the environmental impact assessment study.
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Chairman: After that we will have a question and answer session
and there is microphone in the isle and anyone in the
audience can voice their concerns and will get
answers from the team here this evening. We wish
that you conduct yourselves orderly. We can form a
line behind the mike, and everybody don’t rush at the
same time. And remember it is being recorded so we
want to do it as good as possible. Please do not try to
ask questions when the presentation is on because
this is disturbing, it is distracting. There will be time
for a question and answer session. Without further
ado then, I would like to present you our main
presenter tonight and she will introduce her team Dr.
Margaret Williams. Dr. Williams has her first degree
in Marine Biology and then she did her Doctorate in
Environmental Science, so she is well capable in
presenting this to you and the study on the impact
that this subdivision will have oh just south of us here
this evening. So Dr. Williams. (Applause)
Dr. Williams: Thank you Dr. O’Connor. Good evening everybody,
and welcome. Dr. O’Connor has very kindly agreed
to be my assistant for the presentation. Okay this is
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Dr. Williams: the outline of the presentation. Dr. O’Connor said a
little bit about the NEPA process, I am going to say a
little bit more in terms of the permit requirements.
Then we will have a look at the description of the
project, the methodology used during the EIA, the
results that we found in terms of the existing
environment under the physical biological and social
aspects. And then we look at the potential impacts
that this project could have on the environment and
what we call the mitigation measures, how we can
lesson these impacts in order to ensure that the
development does not cause undue harm to the
environment. We will have a look at some
consideration of alternatives for the project which is
also a requirement of NEPA and then the next steps
and what is required, and then we go into a question
and answer session.
I would like to just introduce the team that is here
tonight. The project team has met almost weekly and
includes various members of the professional team
and we have gone out on the site with groups of team
members because we try to have what we call an
interdisciplinary and multi- disciplinary approach to
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Dr. Williams: the EIA. The project meetings are lead by Mr. Gore
who was introduced before, beside him Doris Gross
from Portico Limited, the architect and she will say a
little bit more about the house design. Eusebio Perez,
Project Manager and he is the point man out here in
Old Harbour when the project gets on the way. Israel
Pinchas, Project Manager for one of Gore’s Projects
in Montego Bay. Theresa Rodriguez, Project Officer
and our GIS expert with Environment Solutions
Limited. Sandra Clemmings is our Court Reporter,
she is recording everything as Dr. O’Connor said. We
have to prepare a report and she usually works with
us on these EIA consultations. Remona Brown at the
back is our Admin. Assistant and responsible for all
the logistics for this evening’s event and she is very
aware of all the aspects of the project as well. Brian
Richardson is our Hydrogeologist and he is with BR
Labs Limited. Beside him Mr. Andrew Foreman, from
Foreman Chung and Sykes Consulting Engineers,
Mr. Jason Excell, another engineer from Appropriate
Technologies Limited. SharonMae Shirley a Director
with Environmental Solutions Limited is our
Environmental Chemist she is not here just yet and
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Dr. Williams: Mr. George Campbell, Director and Consulting
Principal also with Environmental Solutions Limited
and responsible for the socio-economic aspects of the
project. Okay, the NEPA process. As Dr. O’Connor
said Mr. Gore had to submit a permit application for
the development, and out of this NEPA requested us
to prepare the Terms of Reference for conducting the
EIA. And the Terms of Reference basically guides
the study to ensure that all the relevant aspects are
covered. NEPA also engages in a scoping exercise
where they have a site visit and also as Dr. O’Connor
says because he is familiar with the process, they
have what they call sister agencies, between 15 and
19 government agencies that sit on a technical review
committee with them and are involved with the
scoping exercise and the determination of the Terms
of Reference. Some of these agencies include
National Works Agency, Water Resources Authority,
ODPEM- the Office of Disaster Preparedness and
Emergency Management, Jamaica National Heritage
Trust and so on. And public consultations. As part of
the EIA we do have a consultation process which I will
speak to a little bit more, but this particular event here
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Dr. Williams: is a requirement of NEPA in order to get the permit. I
said we have a multi disciplinary team because the
EIA has to incorporate all aspects of the environment
and we use a method that we call Charette Style
investigations. We go out on the site as a team, we
have team meetings so that team members don’t go
off individually and do their work and then come back
because the environment is quite interactive and so
we have to get the benefit of all the disciplines. We
review existing documentation, reports, maps, plans,
aerial photos, and of course we do field investigations
and analyses and where necessary laboratory
analyses. And as I said public consultations- as well
interviews in the community, targeted interviews with
particular community groups or civic leaders and
stake holders.
The project site - can everybody at the back see the
slides? The project site is in red just south of
Highway 2000 and bordered by Brampton Farms and
Belmont Park. And what is being proposed, 129 acres
of land and Gore Development proposes to put in 845
two-bedroom houses, there will be 14 commercial
lots, a lot will be provided for the establishment of a
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Dr. Williams: basic school and approximately 19 acres of open
space, green areas which will be used for recreational
areas and playing fields. A sewage treatment plant
has been designed and this plant will meet the NEPA
effluent discharge standards, the design is being
done by Appropriate Technologies Limited. The
sewage treatment plant will have to have its own
permit and licence for discharge. The system is the
CLR system a closed loop reactor process which will
take out the nitrogen and phosphorous. The sewage
treatment plant will be located to the north of the
property and Doris is going to say little bit more about
the layout and she can show you where that is. A
drainage plan has also been prepared by Foreman,
Chung and Sykes Engineers and of the issues that
we discovered on the property or affecting the
property in terms of an existing drain under the
parochial road there by Belmont Park which has
flooded from time to time. So the drainage plan
actually includes widening this drain to increase the
capacity so that, that will alleviate the flooding
problem and to ensure that there is no flooding on the
site when the houses are in place. The roads and the
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Dr. Williams: drain reservations will be graded so that the flow
paths are unobstructed and there will be two green
areas that can serve as detention areas in the event
of extremely excessive rainfall events. Okay, this is
the layout. I am going to ask Doris to come and say
little bit about the layout and about the houses as
well.
Ms. Gross: Thank you Margaret, good evening everyone. I will
keep it brief. The subdivision layout that you see here
on the wall is planned with certain vision behind it
which I would like to describe. I am sure all of you are
familiar with where this piece of land is located. As
you approach it from Old Harbour we will be widening
the road in front of the project so as to alleviate traffic
congestion where it is necessary.
That includes a side walk, a taxi and a bus bay. We
will be creating a main entrance, a wide intersection
main entrance right in the middle of the subdivision, I
hope you can follow with your eyes as I talk. That
entrance into the site is created by a wide boulevard,
a wide main road so that traffic can be kept on that
main spine into development. As you see a circle
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Ms. Gross: going into that main road. That circle is a round-about
from which you can veer left or right into a
neighbourhood so no one is required to drive through
residential areas more than necessary and can stay
on the main. These individual neighbourhoods on the
left and right have a park in the middle and can be
used for sporting or recreational walks. As that
boulevard takes us to the very centre of the
subdivision you will see a large square which is a
large park, that park can accommodate a football
field, a community centre and any other recreational
facilities that the community wishes to develop. And
as I speak to the park you will see rather large green
areas throughout the development which we find are
quite nice to have, they can be developed as the
community grows and there is plenty opportunity for
recreation of all sorts. So again left and right of that
central square park is a larger neighbourhood to the
left and a slightly smaller one to the side. Also
encircling the large part in the middle we have
dedicated a few lots to commercial business. We
were required to make sure that somewhere in the
subdivision near to the residence there is a little bit of
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Ms. Gross: commercial activity but this is a small type,
commercial corner type situation. The top part of our
plan here shows the layout a little bit separated from
the rest, there is a small bridge that will cross the
drain that Dr. Williams mentioned and that is a
neighbourhood up there by itself. The project will be
constructed in phases. The project starts with a lower
left quarter Phase 1, the lower right quarter is Phase 2
and then we move up to the left of the central park
and that is Phase 3, Phase 4 is across the bridge at
the very top of the plan and then Phase 5 is the left
over little area on the other side of that main park.
The layout shows roads and lots you can identify -
before I get to the lots we have located or identify a
piece of land that is available for a basic school which
is usually appreciated by churches or other private
entities who wish to develop that which will be in the
last phase, Phase 5. The lots are quite regular
shaped rectangular lots. In most cases they are three
thousand five hundred square feet large or larger and
the houses are located on these lots in such a way
that they give ample room for expansion to the rear. I
would say that you could safely say the same size
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Ms. Gross: house that you would be getting you could expand to
the back again and add a two storey to the back also
if you wish so. So the land space is quite generous. I
forgot one area of the plan, we have located the
sewage treatment plant without which the
development was not going to happen, into the
furthest corner of the development keeping in mind
that no one wants to live beside one, as well or badly
as they may work, hopefully this one works very well.
We have also surrounded it by a wide buffer of green
space and open area for recreation so that no one
has to live directly adjoining to a sewage treatment
plant. It is also visually quite far away from everyone
so you should not even conceive of or even reminded
that there is a sewage treatment plant. Dr. Williams is
pointing to the drain that sort of cuts the development
in half, that main drain has been created because of
the natural river course that is existing there now,
those of you who live in the adjoining neighbourhood
Belmont or nearby will know that there is a flooding
issue that Dr. Williams already mentioned where the
culvert crosses the road and we have not only
widened the culvert but also widened this river and
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Ms. Gross: turned it into a proper drain which perhaps the
engineer later on can explain a little bit further
because drainage is obviously our best concern that
we all do have and subsequent flooding that
sometimes occurs.
I would like to speak on the house itself. The house is
a two bedroom unit it is seven hundred and forty (740)
square feet large, it consists of, as I said, two
bedrooms of which one is a little bit larger than the
other, and a large bathroom. It also has an open
living, kitchen and dining area. A kitchen will be built
in and also the bathroom will be built with all the
fixtures that are required. The house is built out of
reinforced concrete walls using a form system that
has been used for many projects and is very, very
suitable. It has a timber roof, a timber pitched roof as
you can see by the picture. The house also features
double glazed windows which help to keep the heat
out and keep the house a little bit cooler- sliding
windows. We were trying to actually show the plan. I
have put the plans for the house and the subdivision
on the walls so you are welcome to look around and
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Ms. Gross: study it a little bit further. It also shows on the walls a
flow of plans that we weren’t able to get into this
presentation unfortunately, so you can see the layout.
Any further questions you may have, you can address
after the presentation. Thank you. (Applause)
Dr. Williams: Thank you Doris. Physical environment. So the area
is known as New Market Pen as I said before located
just off the southern ramp of Highway 2000. Major
drainage network in the area and as you saw an
unnamed gully or drain actually runs through the
property. The main drainage lines includes the
Church Pen Gully, the Stony Gully and Frasers Gully
which you are probably all familiar with. The Church
Pen Gully is actually outside the one kilometer radius.
This map shows the one kilometer radius around the
Newmarket Pen area. The property is fairly flat, there
are higher elevations found towards the north of the
property about sixty-two feet above sea level and then
towards the south it is a little bit lower at twenty eight
feet above sea level but the land is quite flat. The
geology is dominated by the limestone group with
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Dr. Williams: coarse gravel, sand and clay over top, the soils have
fairly high salinity which is not unusual for this area
and the ground water is fairly high at about eight to
fifteen feet below ground level.
We had a look at the contributing upper catchment for
the area which is where water will be coming from,
the watershed that feeds into the property, and that is
delineated in red. The proposed site is written in red
and outlined in green and you can see the drainage
network there in blue. So quite an extensive
drainage system within the project area and as I said
one line actually crosses the project. Because of this
of course we have had to look at the storm water
runoff what comes out of the upper catchment and
into the property and the engineers and hydrologists
have done their calculations. Currently what we
called the pre-development runoff- what happens now
is at fifty-one cubic meters per second. Now when a
development goes in and we have paved areas and
we lose the ability of water to percolate then a lot of
water runs off and this is where you could have
potential flooding issues. The calculations have
shown that the post development run off would only
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Dr. Williams: be four cubic meters per second higher indicating
about a seven point eight percent increase which is
not considered a significant increase. However, the
engineers, having incorporated this into the design
and that is one of the reasons why the drain is being
widened and the capacity is being increased. Looking
at water for the area, currently the water for the area,
the general area comes from the Succuba Pen and
Bowers Pen water supply systems and the project
has calculated how much water would be required for
the eight hundred and forty five units with an average
of four persons in each household and that comes to
just over two hundred and two thousand cubic meters
per year. Right now water supply is projected to be
obtained from a well that currently exists on the site,
the previous property owners have used this well and
the supply for the well is at two thousand four hundred
cubic meters per day. Now, the developers will have
to get a licence- a Water Abstraction Licence from the
Water Resources Authority in order to get this water
from the well and they will have the projected yield. In
terms of water quality, we tested the water in that
unnamed gully and the water quality is actually quite
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Dr. Williams: poor there are faecal coliforms suggesting some
sewage inflows or trade effluent inflows and high
biochemical oxygen demand. There is a lot of storm
water runoff from the Old Harbour area into that drain
as well.
Total suspended solids which is one of the
parameters that we also measured is currently higher
than the trade effluent and sewage standards. And
what I have listed here are some heavy metals-
copper, lead, zinc and manganese they were all
below the national standard. In terms of ground water
quality which is the water from the well which is what
is supposed to be used for potable water supply, the
main parameter of concern is what we called total
dissolved solids and this is because of saline intrusion
which is common to this area as well, so it gives the
water salty taste. The best method for treating this
water to create potable supply is reverse osmosis and
this is what is being currently proposed for the
development. We also looked at air quality and noise
to establish existing baseline conditions. We also
looked at pesticide residues in the soil because the
land had been previously under agricultural use. Five
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Dr. Williams: stations were randomly sampled including perimeter
sites and a site close to the well and none of the
samples showed any pesticide residue. On the
biological environment.
The site is a highly disturbed site, we have no natural
habitat zones it was previously in agricultural use.
Two main types of habitats were identified-
abandoned pasture which is dominated by the African
star grass which was used for cattle and secondary
woodland along the banks of the stream dominated
by some large trees such a quango, bastard cedar
and cashew. In terms of birds a fairly limited
population of birds because of the highly degraded
nature of the site. This is a typical shot of the site with
abandoned pasture land and then the secondary
woodland. We had a look at the stream to see if there
were any flora or fauna there because as I said before
high levels of coliform and BOD, very highly polluted,
the water is very dark and cloudy with odours and
there was nothing living in there.
Birds even though the site is so highly disturbed, bird
populations can establish themselves in many areas.
We have a lot of ubiquitous species and seed eaters.
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Dr. Williams: Thirty-six species of birds were observed during the
field visits, several waterbird species were observed
because of the proximity of the aqua-culture ponds
and also a micro dam which is a little bit down stream
of that gully. Three endemic species of birds were
also observed, the Jamaican woodpecker, the
Jamaican streamer tail and the Jamaica mango
hummingbird. A few migrant species were observed
but we have to note that the study was done during
the summer. In the winter months there are likely to
be more migrant species that would be observed on
this site. Night surveys were also done, nocturnal
sampling, and this revealed several barn owls. No
other species were really observed at night.
In terms of other animals quite a few butterflies on the
site. Eighteen species were observed, none of these
are rare or threatened, mostly common and typical of
open disturbed habitats and secondary areas. Many
tree lizards, again no terrestrial reptiles of importance.
And the pond turtle which is an endemic species may
occur on the site. It was not observed but is likely
because of the nature of the habitat. In terms of
endangered species, the only species of concern for
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Dr. Williams: the Portland Bight Protected Area, and for the
property is the American crocodile, Crocodylus
acutus. It is protected by national and international
law so it is of concern both in terms of protection of
the species and also protection of humans against
interaction with the species. It has been reported
from the lower reaches of the drain, one or two
reports from a little bit further up but the caretaker of
the property indicated that he has been there fifteen
to twenty years and had not seen any crocodiles
come up on the property. But right now they appear
not to be a risk but they do inhabit the lower reaches
of the drain. As Doctor O’Connor said, the property is
situated within the Portland Bight Protected Area. It is
the largest protected area in Jamaica, it includes both
terrestrial and marine areas and it’s co-managed by
NEPA, the National Environment and Planning
Agency and CCAM, the Caribbean Coastal Area
Management Foundation. It is a multi use area-
industrial concerns, residential concerns, urban
concerns- so it does not mean that no development
can occur but development occurs within certain
guidelines. As Dr. O’Connor said, there has been
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Dr. Williams: rapid growth in Old Harbour over the last twenty
years. There used to be a fairly large manufacturing
concern, manufacturing has declined but heavy
industry still exists in the area in the form of electricity
generation and alumina production. Currently most of
the economic activity is related to the process of
urbanization and many persons actually work outside
the area but reside within Old Harbour. It is a growing
community as Dr. O’Connor has said. This map
again, the project area is in red and that boundary
shows the immediate zone of influence and the extent
of our socio-economic survey and interviews all the
way down to Old Harbour Bay. The main land
use in the area is settlement. As we discussed, the
project area is bordered by agricultural activity on
three sides. The population is fairly evenly split with
regard to gender, male and female, and a fairly young
population with most of the inhabitants under the 39
year age group. In terms of public health facilities
there is one clinic in Old Harbour and a satellite clinic
in Old Harbour Bay. The nearest hospital that would
serve this development is in May Pen. Fire brigade
station in Old Harbour- there is one unit which carries
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Dr. Williams: a limited supply of water. The town is served by
several fire hydrants but we were told that not all are
in good working condition. The police have about sixty
persons on staff. The crime rate is not considered to
be high in the area. One high school which is where
we are- the Old Harbour High School and five schools
that feed into this. During the survey we were actually
informed that several students actually come from
Spanish Town and other areas to school here.
JPSCo has approved the electrical design for the
project and supply of electricity is not expected to be
an issue. All the water for the project is expected to
come from the well, as I said before a licence is to be
obtained from WRA and the water is to be treated by
the process of reverse osmosis. There is a small
section of a canal, NIC, National Irrigation
Commission canal on the property. This is not
expected to be an issue for the property and it should
be splinted off so the issue of flooding or overflow of
that canal should not affect the property. Now, during
the interviews some concerns were raised by some of
the communities and individuals again they were ad
hoc interviews with individuals, targeted interviews
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Dr. Williams: with community groups, stakeholders and so on. One
of the issues raised was traffic, the congestion within
Old Harbour and on the Old Harbour Bay Main Road.
And Dr. O’Connor did his calculations in terms of the
number of houses and the projected number of cars.
A traffic impact assessment was done for this study
as well and the recommendations have been taken on
board in terms of dealing with the traffic. It is really for
increasing, widening the road in the vicinity of the
project area and the project entrance providing
adequate ingress and egress, which are like turn
lanes so that there is no congestion getting into and
out of the property. Change in land use was also
discussed. There were some persons that were a little
bit concerned about lands coming out of agricultural
production, although production might not be the right
word because they are not actually productive but
they are agricultural lands. And we had looked at the
Highway 2000 corridor development plan produced by
the Planning Institute of Jamaica which looks at a one
kilometer boundary along Highway 2000 and looking
at zoning requirements within that. The area where
the development is proposed is zoned for or is
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Dr. Williams: recommended to be zoned for residential and urban
use. Potential for flooding we discussed that in terms
of the flooding that exists, it is actually off the property
that drain, but the developers have taken the initiative
to widen the drain as part of the project development
so that there is no risk of flooding for the community
and for their property. Security was raised as an
issue because certain persons in the community felt
that whenever construction work was going on and
large work forces would come in, and with people
coming in and going out, that security was sometimes
compromised. So that this would have to be certainly
addressed to ensure that the crime rate, which I have
said before is not very high, would not increase.
Archaeological and cultural heritage. There really are
no issues on the site, Jamaica National Heritage Trust
was advised about the project and asked to comment
on any heritage issues and the potential for any listed
monuments on the site and there were none. In
terms of the impacts, when we looked at identification
of the impacts, and I will go through the impacts so I
just want you to have a look at some of the
terminology that I will be using. We speak to impacts
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Dr. Williams: as being major impacts or minor impacts, reversible
impacts or irreversible impacts. For example the
change in land use is an irreversible impact. Once the
845 houses are put in it is highly unlikely that they will
be taken out and the land reverted to agricultural use.
Not that it is not impossible because it has happened
in other places but that is a type of impact. So we
expect that the change in land use will be irreversible.
Positive and negative impacts. Mostly in
environmental impact assessments people expect the
impacts to be negative but there are several positive
impacts.
During the construction phase there will be generation
of employment, there will be a need for skilled and
unskilled labour, there will be the need for provision of
goods services and supplies and of course the main
impact, the main positive impact will be during the
operational phase when the housing solutions are
available for residents. We have long term and short
term impacts. During the construction phase we do
expect some short term impacts such as increase in
traffic movement in heavy vehicles, haulage vehicles
bringing in equipment and earth materials and so on
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Dr. Williams: to the site, but that is a short term impact during the
construction phase. Long term impacts would include
something like solid waste disposal. Once the 845
units are in solid waste disposal has to be taken care
of for the life of the project. So, just having a look at
some of these impacts drainage and flooding I spoke
about that already and that is taken care of in the
engineering design. We don’t expect that, that is
going to be an issue. If you have any questions about
that later Mr. Foreman and Mr. Richardson will be
able to answer any specific questions you have in
terms of the design and the flows and the quantities.
Air quality, we expect that during the construction
phase there will be increased levels of dust, but we
have recommended mitigation measures to reduce
this. Some of these are standards measures. Ms.
Gross had said the project will be developed in
phases so the entire property will not be stripped of
vegetation for construction but only the phase that is
being constructed so that there won’t be exposure of
top soil which can create wind borne particles.
Usually fugitive dust or dust particles are released
during construction but on very dry and windy days
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Dr. Williams: wetting is recommended as well as covering of stock
piles of earth materials. Again this is a short term
impact but we have to look at this particularly because
the Belmont Park community is so close. If you have
any questions on air quality after I am going to direct
you to Mrs. Shirley she was not here during the
introduction but she is here now. Can I just ask you to
stand Miss Shirley. She is a Director and Consulting
Principal with Environmental Solutions Limited and
she is our environmental chemist so she can answer
your questions on the air quality and the water
quality. I spoke about the surface water quality we
know that there are some inflows into that drain some
of them we have identified some of them we are not
sure of, but unfortunately that is outside the control of
the developer. Ground water quality and quantity- as I
said the yield as projected by the WRA is sufficient to
supply the entire development and the water would
have to be treated in order to be adequate for
portable use, and the treatment option reverse
osmosis is well known technology, and that is what is
being proposed. Hazard vulnerability, we contacted
the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency
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Dr. Williams: Management which is usually done in our EIA’s to
determine if they have any issues on the site. The
main issue that they had was the drain as it exists, the
flooding that exist there but other than that no other
potential hazard. I would just like to take the
opportunity to welcome Mr. Peter Espeut who just
came in, the director of CCAM, I am sorry he missed
my section on Portland Bight Protected Area but I did
mention it.
Ecology- habitat will be removed if we are going to
remove vegetation to put in houses, so that will be an
impact- that will be an irreversible impact. But with
landscaping and the maintenance of green areas
there will be some aesthetic appeal and there will
always be the opportunity for some species that are
displaced to possibly come back in. But certainly the
habitat will change, the ecological features of the area
will change and that is something that cannot be
completely mitigated. Traffic, we spoke about that,
that there is a projected negative impact in terms of
the increase in traffic with the widening of the road
and the widening of the road in the vicinity of the
project area and the entrance.
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Dr. Williams: Engineering should help to alleviate some of the
problems. The developer has been in discussion with
the National Works Agency and the National Works
Agency is supposed to be also widening the road
beyond the project area, they have not given a time
line for this, but this is supposed to be done.
Public health and safety issues. Really I think the
water quality is the main one in terms of the
Environmental Health Unit having to approve the
supply of the potable water source as well as the
treatment of the sewage. The sewage effluent will be
disposed of in that existing drain. Mr. Excell is the one
designing the sewage treatment plant and he will be
happy to answer any questions that you have in terms
of the level of effluent, the volume of effluent, and the
types of treatment. That also covers liquid waste
management. Solid waste management is the
responsibility of National Solid waste Management
Authority discussions will be held with them when the
permit is issued and before the operation phase, for
them to determine scheduling requirements, volumes
and load so that they can adequately include this
development in their plans.
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Dr. Williams: Cumulative impacts, we looked at cumulative impacts
which are not just the impacts that this project will
have on this site or in this area but because of other
projects that might be going on, or existing impacts.
The main one was the change of land use, as I said
looking at the Highway 2000 corridor development
plan a lot of these areas currently in agricultural use
are being rezoned for urban and residential
development. So that would be a cumulative impact,
this is not the only site that would probably go into
housing in this area. Traffic congestion I have already
spoken about that, that is a cumulative impact
because if other developments come in then the
issues of traffic will be exacerbated. Solid waste
disposal. Again, we know that National Solid Waste
Management Authority does have some challenges in
terms of scheduling and getting enough units out and
keeping a regular schedule and also in terms of
identification of suitable sites, but that is their
responsibility and we expect that, that will be taken
care of. I just wanted to mention the recommendation
that came from other agencies that we have
incorporated. As I said we contacted the Office of
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Dr. Williams: Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management
and they had made some specific recommendations
in terms of that drain (1) to correct the ninety degree
angle that is there which contributes to the flooding
problem, (2) to conduct the hydrological assessment
(3) supervision of cut and fill. Now, the first two things
we have done and incorporated into the design of the
project and the engineering design. Cut and fill is not
a real issue, the site is flat so in terms of the
engineering use of the word cut and fill there are no
areas to be cut as such and so we don’t expect - that
is really in terms of slope stability and hazard
vulnerability- but we don’t expect that to be a problem
on the site. They had also recommended
consideration of the eastern boundary to be upgraded
to alleviate flooding but we had no reports of flooding
along the eastern boundary. We also got
recommendations from Jamaica Environment Trust
and I would just like to take the opportunity to
apologize for Diana McCaulay who said she was not
able to be here this evening. They have reviewed the
Terms of Reference and sent comments in directly to
us and the main point that they had raised was that a
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Dr. Williams: soil erosion management plan should be designed
and this is because of the risk of soil erosion when
vegetation is stripped. We have included a soil
erosion management plan in the report. It is a very
brief plan because soil erosion is not really an issue
on the property and we had discussed this with
Jamaican Environment Trust. The site is flat, the soils
are not highly erodible and we do have mitigation
measures for reducing soil erosion such as I spoke
about- phasing of the development so that all the
vegetation will not be stripped to expose all the top
soil. The risk is that in the event of heavy rainfall that
exposed soil as well as stock piles of earth material
can be washed into the drain and then that will be
taken along to the coast which can increase high
levels of sedimentation. So, our mitigation measures
include containment of stockpiles of earth materials,
and it is in the interest of the developers to do this so
that if it rains all of his earth materials will not be
washed away. But as I said the soils are not highly
erodible and soil erosion is not expected to be a risk.
Consideration of alternatives, this is also a
requirement in the Terms of Reference to look at
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Dr. Williams: various alternatives within the project design. I just
wanted to mention three of them- one is the source of
water. NWC had been contacted about supply of
water but Water Resources Authority had also been
contacted and felt that the NWC would not be able to
supply water with the current situation as it exists, so
the best option is to use the water from the well and
WRA has confirmed that the yield is adequate. In
terms of housing solutions and green space this is
always a challenge for the planners to try to maximize
how many units are available, but adhering to the
requirements of town planning for the amount of
green space per habitable acre and Doris spoke
about the green area. You saw them before and the
areas that are available for recreational use playing
fields and so on. The no action alternative, meaning
what happens if this project does not go ahead. If
this project does not go ahead then the land will
remain as is, as abandoned pasture and secondary
woodland until some other developer purchases it and
puts in some other type of development or puts it
back into agricultural use so those are really the
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Dr. Williams: options to put in the 845 houses or to just not do
anything with the property.
Okay, next step- we go into a question and answer
session. I have introduced everybody Brandon Hay,
came in he is an ornithologist and botanist and he has
done the field research for us. He is also with CCAM
so he knows a lot about the area. I think I introduced
everybody else- Ian Johnson, from Masters and
Johnson, Commissioned Land Surveyors, he is also
on the project team. So we have a question and
answer session. I also want to recognize the
presence of NEPA, Mr. Leonard Francis, and Miss
Mittoo is here from the documentation centre,
anybody else from NEPA? Okay thank you. So the
next step- we are going to go into a question and
answer session. You can ask questions of any of the
team members. In terms of the requirements the
report is available at the Parish Council Office, the
Parish Library, the NEPA documentation centre and
the NEPA website- it should be up on the NEPA
website. Mr. Perez will have a copy at the site office
and a copy is at the Gore Development head office in
Kingston.
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Dr. Williams: After this presentation there is a thirty day period in
which any comments you may have on the project
should be addressed to NEPA in writing. So you can
either take the information that you have received
from this presentation or from reading the report and
put any of your concerns in writing to NEPA within
thirty days, and that is it. So thank you I open up for
question and answer.
QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Chairman: Thank you Dr. Williams, first our MP is about to ask
us a question and we have a wide team here to
answer. If several persons require question at the
same time I ask that you form a line behind the MP so
that we can have it orderly
done.
Mr. Warmington: The only question that I want to ask, is whether or not
the water from the well that they are going to use
whether it will be accessible to other communities
within the area if they so need in the future? But I am
here today to lend my support to the project itself. I
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Mr. Warmington: met with representatives from Environmental
Solutions during the process of the investigation of
the field work and I had basically one concern and
that had to do with the surface run off, the drainage
itself the flooding. And I made some observations
which I am satisfied that they have corrected in itself.
The project to me is a very good one. And as a
Member of Parliament I wish to support it, and if there
were areas that would affect the community and the
people here I would not support it because eventually
down the road they would have problems. As to do
with the traffic I think the highway itself can rectify
that, going to Kingston. I don’t believe this project
would have any adverse effect on the services
provided in the area at this time. They are providing
their own water. As it relates to school, the Ministry of
Education is now in the process of obtaining lands in
the area to build a new primary school and a new high
school, therefore if people from outside the area
acquire these houses there would not be a problem
within the community. As it relates to health services,
the government is now purchasing properties in Old
Harbour to improve the health service to a Type Four
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Mr. Warmington: Clinic so right along you would not have a problem.
From my prospective as a Member of Parliament, I
don’t believe that this project would have any adverse
effect on the community and as such I am in full
support of the project as it has been presented.
(Applause)
Chairman: Thank you Mr. Warmington. Basically Mr.
Warmington has given his blessing for the project and
he had a concern about the availability of water from
the project to other surrounding communities. Can
one of your team members address that?
Dr. Williams: Mr. Foreman will address that in terms of the quantity
of water available and how it will be available to
others.
Mr. Foreman: Good evening everyone, my name is Andrew
Foreman from Foreman, Chung and Sykes and we
are responsible for the civil engineering designs for
the project which includes the water supply. When
you deal with water issues you always deal with
quantity and quality and in the approval process we
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Mr. Foreman: have to demonstrate that adequate water supply
would be available for the development.
We estimated using an estimate of 4.5 people per
dwelling which is above the national average taken
from the census report of 2000 and we have
presented this to the Water Resources Authority and
they have accepted our estimates of the water
requirement. I can assure you that the well which has
been licenced has more than adequate water, not a
lot more but a bit more than is required for this
development.
Dr. Williams: Mr. Warmington’s question included whether or not
any water would be available for other communities,
but I think that maybe Mr. Gore would have to answer
that.
Mr. Gore: Good evening the water - because we have to do an
RO plant, it has to be operated by a private operator
because the Water Commission has a policy, it does
not take over reverse osmosis water plants, so it is
either going to be done by a private operator or by
ourselves. If that is the case, then we could look at
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Mr. Gore: the excess water to see if it could be available to the
community, if it is done by ourselves. If it is a private
entity or another provider then discussions would
have to be done with them. But there is a difficulty
when you do that, you have to make sure that you
can pay for it and becoming a utility company would
be something that would be new and you would have
to get licence for it. And providing water to existing
customers of the National Water Commission who are
having existing problems- it becomes a tricky
question. I hope that answers it.
Chairman: Thank you Mr. Gore, I hope that Mr. Warmington is at
ease now. While people prepare their questions I
must remind you that the deliberations here have
legal ramifications and as such we should all sign the
register at the back. And remember too that the
session is being recorded and when you come to the
microphone please give your basic information, your
name and to which group you are affiliated. As soon
as you have your questions ready you can approach
the microphone. Housing developments will have
positive and negative spin offs. The negative we
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Chairman: should all be concerned about and the developers are
trying to mitigate this as much as possible. The
positive ones will be welcomed for the community in
general.
3,000 people they will have needs gardeners-
helpers, baby sitters, and so on, workmen, people
think of expansion, you have masons and carpenters
and so on. For projects such as these when
somebody buys a house it is a very big investment in
terms of their lifetime. And then all should be done to
ensure that when they buy a house - just think of a
couple, they say more times than not, the husband
departs this world ten years on average before the
wife. Think of a little old lady now, sitting in her house
can she live comfortably in that house can she
manage to live alone there. A good project will
ensure that this is possible and then at that time you
would say the developers got it right and the
environmental people got it right, if it cannot happen
then somebody was at fault somewhere along the
line. So we should all work to make sure that this
major investment is livable for quite a long time in
comfort.
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Mr. Chen: My name is Michael Chen, I am a private citizen, Sir.
The question I will ask just for clarification. How do
you, in terms of your ecological evaluation, how do
you evaluate how do you do that assessment in terms
of flora, fauna, physical environment what do you
measure? Can you give us a brief description of that?
Dr. Williams: I am going to start and I am going to ask Brandon to
say a little bit in terms of what he has done. But what
you want to know is how we actually assess the
ecological attributes of the site?
Mr. Chen: What is the impact?
Dr. Williams: The impact, okay. I am going to let Brandon say a
little bit about how we actually assess the various
components of the site. In terms of the impact the
main things that we look at in terms of ecological
assessment is the habitat lost or habitat modification
or what we call habitat fragmentation because the
habitat includes the flora which is the basis usually
on which the fauna exist when we are talking about
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Dr. Williams: terrestrial habitats. And when you have a
development come in you can either remove
everything as I spoke about an irreversible impact, so
all the ecological features as it exists are removed.
You can modify the habitat meaning change it up or
you can fragment the habitat, some habits are cut in
half or a portion cut off and that can actually affect
how the species live in there. Because species that
need to travel, migratory species and so on may not
survive well in a fragmented habitat because you
cannot get across a boundary, so we look at issues
like that. For this project because the area was so
highly modified and what we really had was
grassland, overgrown cattle grass and some
secondary woodland, and as Brandon will tell you no
distinct zones. So that, in terms of looking at how the
habitat will be altered we did not really predict any
significant negative impacts. The habitat will change
and a lot of the flora will be removed so that is a
negative impact. But a lot of the species that are
there like the birds are what we call ubiquitous
species. They can just move on to the next habitat. It
is not like a primary forest up on John Crow
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Dr. Williams: Mountains or Blue Mountains where they live in a
particular area and when that area is disturbed they
find it hard to move on. So this area is already
disturbed so these are species that are used to that
sort of habitat. Does that help you? I am going to let
Brandon say a little bit more about the methods he
used for the different species to help you to get more
out of that.
Mr. Hay: Good afternoon everyone, I am Brandon Hay I am a
consultant, ecological consultant on this project. I am
also the scientific officer with CCAM Foundation,
CCAM as I believe was mentioned is the NGO
working with NEPA on the Portland Bight Protected
Area and this development does fall within the
boundaries of that protected area. In seeking to
assess the ecological importance there are two things
you really need to hone in on. What is there, and
then you need to know some of the characteristics of
some of the species that are there. And so the first
thing we did was to have a quick assessment of the
site just visually what is there and then sort of
determine how we were going to do a sampling
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Mr. Hay: programme and the sampling programme that you
design is based on the characteristics of the terrain
and the species that may be there. And the end
product of that is an idea of what is there and how
many. In other words you get a species list and an
abundance list and from that the second stage is to
sort of assess those species that are there. Dr.
Williams spoke about some species which are very,
very restricted in range and which are very sensitive
to habitat change. And she also mentioned that this
particular site is highly disturbed it is basically
secondary pasture and therefore those species
thatare there are naturally highly adaptable, they have
already made themselves a home in what is a highly
disturbed habitat. And so, the additional disturbance
of course is likely to have more negative impact on
possibly the abundance and the diversity of species
that are there. But then you have to weigh this in
terms of whether these species are common or not.
And for the most part the species that are here are
common not only in disturbed habitat but in
undisturbed habitats as well. And so we did not have
any major red flags, when you are doing these things
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Mr. Hay: you are looking for endemic species for instance, and
you are looking for restricted species and you are
looking for that type of thing. And we did not have
any major red flags with the exception of the crocodile
as was mentioned and the crocodile is controversial
because it has a two-fold relationship. One we are a
danger to it and it is a danger to us, so we had to do
some thinking about that. So that is basically what we
need. I don’t know if I properly answered the question,
but that is basically what I did.
Mr. Chen: Was there a need for any consideration of say
relocation or anything like that in your study?
Mr. Hay: Not of any of the species that were there. As I said
before everything that was there was very common
was very plastic, very adaptable and they would very
quickly sort of move themselves around the
construction work and some of them will eventually
come back as vegetation, landscaping and so on,
comes back into the area. Most of the species are
quite happy in suburban environments as well, and
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Mr. Hay: this habitat would naturally be suitable for them as
well. It may not support as many of them, because
there would be a net loss of space that would be
available. But we did not consider that for any of the
species at all that really was not a necessary
consideration.
Mr. Chen: Thank you.
Mr. Cameron: My name is Errol Cameron, Chairman of the Old
Harbour Bay Fishermen Co-op. I am an active
member of the community development association,
that is Old Harbour Bay. I have a number of
questions and you have to bear with me because I
have not seen the report and it is the first time I hear
where to get it and all these things which is very
unfortunate. The first one is the simplest one and it is
directed to Mr. Gore, presently I can actually count
maybe five or more developers who have not met
their obligations in terms of certain things for housing
development in this country. And the Jamaican
legislation that is existing does not seem as if it ties
them or holds them to those obligations. What will be
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Mr. Cameron: in place for this one which will make it different to
ensure that water is there, light is there, road is there,
road is maintained, drain is maintained I want to know
what is there. Simply, you might not have to answer
because I am going to write these concerns really.
But the ones that I need answers for - but you can
think about that Mr. Gore and if you wish to answer
that later on you can answer. First of all I look at the
picture of a house somewhere there and you speak
about the framework of the roof being timber and it is
slope roof, and you speak about extension going to
the back and all of that thing. What about going up on
top and why timber roof? What about slab roof top
roof you add on to the top because we are not paying
for the space upstairs so why that type of
development? She needs to answer that because I
have about ten more questions quickly.
Mr. Gore: In relation to your question about complying with
regulations...
Mr. Cameron: No, not complying with regulations you know because
some regulations are not enough to tie you to certain
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Mr. Cameron: obligation, so I am not asking about complying with
the existing ones because a lot of developers they do
not live up to certain things and the law cannot hold
them to it and I know of some of those. So I am not
speaking about existing regulations, because it is
easy you can just say this and that and you have to
comply with it but there are others. I have seen in this
country where a lot of developments have taken place
and I can name a number of schemes and the people
have gotten a run for their money, developers finish
and they leave, within five years they disappear and
you cannot touch them after that.
Mr. Gore: In relation to the different aspects of the development
I think you are talking about water supply and sewage
disposal. There is going to be a constant water
supply, there is a well on the property and that well is
going to be operated by a private operator. There is a
sewage treatment plant that is also going to be on the
property that is going to perform the sewage
treatment also to be operated by a private operator,
those are both regulated by the Ministry of Health
which I know about because we have built sewage
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Mr. Gore: treatment plants in the past and it is regulated and
operated and checked on a monthly basis. In relation
to roads, drainage those are built by us according to
what is approved and we have to operate until it is
taken over by the Parish Council. And the only way
the Parish Council takes it over is if they come and
inspect it and we have met all the obligations and
done it according to what has been approved. There
is no way to run, you cannot just run because if
something goes wrong we are held responsible and it
is not taken over by the Parish Council. I don’t know if
that answers your question appropriately.
Mr. Cameron: It answers as I expected, but not how it is suppose to
be answered.
Mr. Gore: Gore Developments stands by all the developments
that it has done, we have a history and we have a
reputation...
Mr. Cameron: And so does the Parish Council and NEPA they have
their reputation...
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Mr. Gore: But I am not dealing with Parish Council....
Mr. Cameron: You said a while ago they take over and all those
things. We don’t depend on those people anymore,
not even NEPA who is represented here, because I
am going to speak about the sewage treatment plant
and forgive me because I have not seen anything
about the grey water where will that go, will it spread,
will it have tile field because I know it is not going to
the sewage treatment plant, where will that go I need
an answer for that as well?
Mr. Gore: The sewage effluent is going to be discharged...
Mr. Cameron: I know about that one but what about the grey water,
the one that you are going to use to wash your hands,
wash your plate with the grease in it where will that
go? I have not seen anything about that in the
presentation, I don’t know if it is in the report.
Mr. Excell: Good night everyone, it is my understanding that all of
the waste water from the houses will go to the plant
so the grey water will not be separated from the black
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Mr. Excell: water and then they all will be treated at the sewage
treatment plant. The water will be of a quality that they
can either reuse it in the community if you need water
to water the lawns or the football field or anything
around the plants or it can be discharged into the
gully. So our suggestion is that, it would be better to
use the water to water the football field rather than
taking the RO water which is more expensive and use
it to water the grass.
Mr. Cameron: I am going to ask Dr. Williams to bring up back the
proposed layout of the site for me because there is a
concern about the sewage treatment plant also. She
said that nobody wants to be near it and then you
have the southeasterly wind blowing maybe nine
months per year and then you are going to put it
northeast of the project so what is that suggesting?
Very near to the gully that she speak about, say the
gully when they do the sampling the copper build up
the manganese, faecal coliform is about certain
standards and yet still you put the sewage plant
where the scent will blow back onto the houses 75%
of the time.
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Mr. Cameron: So if that is it, is it that at the top right hand corner of
what Phase 3, the purple area, right? And if true
north, right at the top there is that true north? What is
that arrow pointing that is true north. So the sewage
plant is directly south east of the entire houses where
we get 75% south easterly wind per year. So what is
the intention of putting it beside the gully there? Are
we going to increase what is existing there the bad
condition of the gully or are we going to do anything to
alleviate the gully problem?
Mr. Excell: No, what I am saying is, the quality of the effluent
leaving the plant will be sufficiently treated so that you
can reuse the water to keep the green spaces
irrigated if you want to instead of putting it into the
gully.
Mr. Cameron: Forgive me you know, I don’t know anything about
sewage treatment plant but I can tell you, you have
some existing that NEPA approve. One famous one
is the great salt pond up by Helshire and you can go
there anytime and see the faeces going into the sea
until now.
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Mr. Excell: The effluent leaving the plant will leave in that same
gully that is passing through the property and it will go
down to the micro dam below the property that is
where the effluent will end up eventually.
Mr. Cameron: If it goes into that gully it won’t end up in the micro
dam. It will end up in the other gully behind there.
Mr. Excell: Gore Developments has finished a similar plant to this
one and they have been operating it for the last three
years and it is in Innswood and if anyone wants to go
by Innswood and see the type of plant that we are
going to be putting in it is a very similar one to it. I
know your concern because there are a lot of plants
around the country that don’t work...
Mr. Cameron: Yes.
Mr. Excell: ...But I think the problem a lot of time is that people
treat these things as problems and not assets, and if
you look at it, it is water that you can use instead of
putting it in the gully then you can saved the stressed
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Mr. Excell: water system that we have in this area for irrigation
purposes rather than using drinking water to water the
grounds. That is my suggestion to you not to see it as
a problem but as a potential asset.
Mr. Cameron: We don’t have a problem with what you are saying
because we are going to hold NRCA to certain things
this time around because they are very famous and
also infamous too for certain things. The next
question, the reverse osmosis process that you speak
about to get out the salinity out of the water that is
certainly going to cost more and the users are going
to expect to pay more in comparison to the one from
the National Water Commission. And I want to find
out if it is really a fact that the Water Commission
cannot supply the water there. I want to find out truly
somebody need to say it and let me understand.
Because I know that in the St. Dorothy’s Plain, the
National Water Commission does not have a problem
with water coming to St Dorothy’s Plain none at all.
They have free flow of water as well as pumped
water, so I don’t understand.
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Dr. Williams: I am going to let Mr. Gore answer that but part of your
question that was not answered about the winds and
the sewage treatment plant, and I believe your
concern is odours. If the plant is operating properly
not only is the effluent that is discharged to meet the
NEPA standard it is not to have odours. So only if
there is malfunctioning or something has gone wrong;
so you should not have odours, right Mr. Excell?
Mr. Cameron: When we reach that bridge we will cross it.
Mr. Gore: It is the preference of Gore Developments to have
water provided by the National Water Commission.
We have been informed by the authorities that there
is not adequate water supply to supply water for this
development, it is our choice and our preference to
have it done so and we have been told otherwise. So
we are in agreement with you, we would like to have
water supply for the development by the National
Water Commission but we have not received that
approval from the authorities.
Mr. Cameron: How will the cost of the water compare to the...
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Mr. Gore: The RO plant is going to be more expensive.
Mr. Cameron: I mean in terms of percentage how much more you
expect the house holders to pay?
Mr. Gore: It depends on the volume. It is hard to answer that
question right now.
Mr. Cameron: But you must have that in place.
Mr. Gore: It depends on the usage.
Mr. Cameron: You have to follow up on that you can’t say that you
just can’t do that. I am not going to take that I am
going to deal with it further. We are going to change
the whole ecology in and around and we speak about
some of the endemic species to Jamaica like the
mango hummingbird and the streamer tail
hummingbird and all of that. What do you have in the
plan in terms of the vegetation of the people? Are you
going to recommend to them flowering plants or some
old evergreen shrub or something like that? Will there
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Mr. Cameron: be any recommendations because we want to get
more environmentally friendly and see if we can
preserve some of those birds? We are going to put
flowering plants, evergreen trees what we are going
to put in them, are there any recommendations?
Dr. Williams: Okay, there are two main things, one is that in the
mitigation measures we usually recommend that any
large trees be retained. It is usually a condition of the
NEPA permit, trees over a certain height that are
outside the footprint of the development meaning
where no houses are no roads will go. For example,
in the green spaces if there are trees there, of a
certain diameter some of those trees should be
retained some of those plants will be there as long as
they are outside the footprint of the development
meaning not where the houses, the drains, the roads,
the sewage treatment plant is to go. The other main
mitigation is that in landscaping we usually
recommend that the developer uses trees that are
native either to the area or to Jamaica and we don’t
import or use what we call invasive species or exotic
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Dr. Williams: species, so that will help to encourage the type of
habitat that was there.
Mr. Cameron: Dr. Williams, just look at Portmore for heaven sake,
what type of plants you see them have over there you
understand where I am getting at?
Dr. Williams: I understand where you are.
Mr. Cameron: No bird don’t want to fly in those trees.
Dr. Williams: I understand where you are but I have to let you know
that NEPA is a lot more vigilant now in terms of their
recommendations and permit conditions.
Mr. Cameron: I certainly would welcome that, long overdue if they
get more vigilant. Now I speak of the Stone village in
Old Harbour Bay and stretching coming up on
Brandon Farm coming up to the ‘Calmas’ Property
area and I was told that the Jamaican National
Heritage Trust say that they don’t have any
monument so no concern. Is that true, because the
Arawaks used to live straight across there go down
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Mr. Cameron: and we still have artefacts somewhere underneath the
soil. I don’t know could Bryan or anybody else from
the Jamaica National Heritage Trust speak to that for
me please.
Dr. Williams: I am going to ask Mr. Campbell who is our socio-
economic expert, and he was on the site and
discussed the heritage issues so I am going to let him
answer that question.
Mr. Campbell: My thought processes were slightly distracted while
you were asking. Mr. Campbell, I am sorry. I am a
socio economist who also coordinated the
assessment of the heritage elements. I think you are
making the point that there are artifacts that have
been found... where? I am sorry.
Mr. Cameron: Not have been found where.
Mr. Campbell: Sorry okay.
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Mr. Cameron: I heard that there was this Arawak village here
because I was not here, and I want to know if it is a
fact that none was on this property?
Mr. Campbell: Let me put it this way, we did what we considered as
due diligence in terms of trying to determine the
historical significance of the site, in fact the Kelly
Whim estate which is just to the west is a well
identified and important area in which there are
heritage elements that are important and certainly
need to be preserved. But with respect to the site that
we are dealing with and, the footprint of the project it
is our opinion that going back into plantation history...
Mr. Cameron: Whose opinion?
Mr. Campbell: The opinion of those who needed to comment on it.
In other words, those who had heritage experience
and were looking at the heritage elements, that the
particular site at which the project will take place was
part and parcel of the cultivated areas of the former
Whim Kelly estate which would probably have been
under sugar, and at several other stages would have
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Mr. Campbell: been under several other things. And on inspection of
the surface areas there were no relics found that
indicated that needed to be preserved. Now, there
are two aspects to, you call it Arawak we say Taino,
one is, whether or not you can establish that there
were settlements. Sometimes you may find evidence
of presence, but not necessarily evidence of
settlement. We found none of either and therefore,
we, to the extent that we were able to pass an
informed opinion, there was no significant heritage
associated with the footprint of the project. Not so, for
just to the west, of where we are dealing with.
Dr. Williams: Can I just add to that George in addition to our
investigations under the environmental impact
assessment we had also written to the Jamaica
National Heritage Trust and sent them a map of the
site and asked for their records to determine what
they had on the site. I also spoke with them on the
phone and they had no listed - they called them Listed
Monuments for the site.
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Mr. Cameron: You see the problem with that you know, and it is not
for this meeting but the Jamaica National Heritage
Trust is actually relying on us for information and I
have not heard anything for us about this project or
anything like that in the community. It is not like one
time...
Mr. Campbell: You want to move on or you are still on the same
subject?
Mr. Cameron: I have two more questions. One which was not
answered, is there a problem why they set a two hour
meeting and I did not get a report it need to be spelt
out now. We speak about the roof of the house and
Mr. Gore did not answer that. Why we are not putting
up slab roof too we are not looking back.
Ms. Gross: I would like to answer that question. You asked a
valid question why do the houses not have a flat roof
or a pitched roof where a flat roof is easily expandable
going upwards because there is already a slab in
place. The reason is because a flat roof house is
extremely hot and it has been proven by past projects
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Ms. Gross: of that nature, Portmore being the most famous that
living in a concrete roof house is extremely
uncomfortable. Hence we chose to improve that two-
bedroom house to have a pitch roof. Warm air rises,
therefore if you have more height in a house it can go
up and dissipate and disappear.
Mr. Cameron: The last question now, the nature of the soil,
limestone and all of that, what do we have for the
mitigation in terms of the erosion because going into
the sea we cannot take anymore salinity down there
now. And I can sit now. (Applause)
Dr. Williams: What was your question- soil erosion? As I said there
is a soil erosion management plan, but we don’t
expect that soil erosion will be a major issue because
the site is going to be developed in phases. So only
the phase that will be constructed will be stripped of
vegetation and the soil exposed. There will be a set
back regulation from the drains that there won’t be
stock piles of any earth materials so that in the event
of heavy rainfalls materials won’t wash down into the
drain and be taken down to the coast. The soils are
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Dr. Williams: really not highly erodible, the land is quite flat no
steep slopes and so we don’t expect any wash down
of soils in heavy rainfall.
Chairman: Thanks. I hope that answers you question.
Ms. Davis: I am Bev Davis, Constituency Secretary JLP. Don’t
you think that the main from the Highway 2000 one?
How do you ensure that the traffic will not back up in
case of emergency? I have three questions. And
what is there for your water storage?
Mr. Foreman: I introduced myself earlier, I am Andrew Foreman
from Foreman, Chung and Sykes, could you go
through the questions one by one please?
Ms. Davis: Do you think that the main entrance is to be as far as
possible from the highway?
Mr. Foreman: Okay, in terms of backing up, that would require that
you would have to stop in order to make your turn.
Coming from Old Harbour to Old Harbour Bay we
have a deceleration lane and a large radius curb so
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Mr. Foreman: that you can get into the subdivision quite easily okay
and a dedicated lane for the through traffic to go to
Old Harbour Bay. So in terms of backing up coming
from the highway that should be minimized by that
road geometry. In terms of coming from Old Harbour
Bay into Old Harbour we have a through lane that is
to go straight through. People who would be coming
out of the development would have to stop to ensure
that it is clear as well as a middle turning lane that
allows for stocking. This means that people who
originate their journey from Old Harbour Bay can go
into that lane and come out of the way of the person
who wants to go through to Old Harbour or Highway
2000 so as to minimize back up. In terms of getting
on to Highway 2000 and going on to Old Harbour
Bay, the intersection is sufficiently far, greater than
300 meters from the intersection with Highway 2000
which ought to be adequate for traffic getting on to the
Highway as there should not really be a back up to
get on to Highway 2000 as such apart from the right
hand turn in the morning to go into Kingston.
Ms. Davis: What is there for your water storage?
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Mr. Foreman: Water storage, we have included a water storage tank
that is as recommended by the Jamaica Institution of
Engineers which is of the order of 200,000 gallons
which is more than one day’s supply of water. You
had a third question?
Chairman: That was it. Thank you my dear that answers your
question. I see Mr. Espeut heading towards the
microphone.
Mr. Espeut: Good evening, Peter Espeut, CCAM. I have had a
look at the document in outline, I have not read every
word and as far as the environmental side of things
the area is not in its natural condition, as Margaret
said, it is disturbed. It was not only disturbed last year
or ten years ago or a hundred years ago, it was
disturbed 200 years ago when Mr. Kelly who was the
House of Assembly Member in 1690 or whatever
disturbed it, so it has been disturbed a long time. The
concern of course is about the present disturbance
that might be done. So Errol asked a question about
the wind blowing the sewage vapor on to the site and
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Mr. Espeut: Margaret’s answer was that when it is treated it is not
supposed to have an odour, but of course before it is
treated it is still flowing there. So it is still flowing
there before it is treated and that possibly is the odour
that will blow on to the scheme, not the output of the
sewage treatment, but the input going into the
sewage treatment.
That odour will blow on to the scheme. You want me
to ask my questions all at once or you are going to
answer them one by one? I will wait.
Dr. Williams: Let him continue.
Chairman: Continue.
Mr. Espeut: Sure. The last question about the water storage that
amount of water that is stored is in a central place
available to everybody is that it?
Mr. Foreman: Yes.
Mr. Espeut: One disadvantage of building the slope roof of course,
is that people want to put a plastic tank on their
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Mr. Espeut: premises for their household use. But when the roof
is sloped like that- and I understand about the heat
and Portmore- but a disadvantage is that when the
roof is like this there is nowhere to put a water tank
and so that might have been part of the question that
was asked about water storage? But my main
question has to do with the water supply because you
said that it is a private company and then you moved
on. But I am sure the possible home owners would
like to know what that means, that if it is not the
National Water Commission, then the Water
Commission could charge x dollars per thousand
gallons, but the private company could charge two
times, or three times. And you know they could
double the price tomorrow and then next month say
well we were not sure of the cost and increase it
again the following month. And so this introduces an
element of uncertainty for the householder and their
budgeting responsibility. So we know that the
National Water Commission comes under the public
utilities commission, and that when they make a ruling
the water price is x then all across Jamaica the NWC
has to follow that. But this company is not NWC and
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Mr. Espeut: it can say well we are using reverse osmosis and
therefore we must double the cost because reverse
osmosis is more expensive than the regular sand
filtration or whatever. And then on top of that there is
the NWC practice. If the water cost is x then the
sewage cost is also x and so, because they assume
that whatever volume of water you use is also coming
out the other end and so they double the thing. Now,
if NWC is using your method of sewage disposal, then
when they double their water price then it means the
sewage price is the same as the water price. But if
your water price is higher than NWC are you then
going to double your water price also which means
that your sewage treatment facility which is the same
as the NWC sewage more than theirs simple because
you are using the same formula of double. So my
question really is Mr. Chairman, what protection is
there for the homeowner who purchases a home and
does not get NWC water but gets private sector water
which is going to be more expensive. What protection
is there for the homeowner that their water bill will not
keep going up and up because the private sector
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Mr. Espeut: person says that my costs are going up and up?
Thank you, Sir.
Mr. Excell: With the wastewater treatment plant, when the plant
is run properly the odour that Mr. Espeut is talking
about - You are talking about the collection system
around the houses- that would not be an issue. All the
piping coming from the houses is vented through all
the vents that are built in the houses so any odours
from the collection system will end up being taken
above roof line of the houses- that is a normal
standard practice in building houses. At the plant
now, you have this fresh waste that has not had time
to sit and fester and become very, very anaerobic and
to start smelling tremendously. That will be mixed with
what they call activated sludge that is already in the
plant that has been in there for many days. And
because the activated sludge in the plant is already
strong it will over power the fresh waste coming in,
and the only place you can actually smell it is as if you
are actually standing on top of the tank and you are
over the thing and even that smell is going to be a
very reduced smell because it is not fully anaerobic so
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Mr. Excell: that is the best way to describe it. Let me give you a
little bit of background, when you smell the sewage
plant that means that the bacteria that are active at
that point are anaerobic. This plant is an aerobic
plant, and we have a stand-by generator which is
part of the plant so that in the event of a power failure
the plant would be able to run without JPS because
there is a standby generator and that is what keeps it
from smelling because the aerobic bacteria does not
give off odours. So if you do smell the plant that is a
trigger to tell the authorities that there is a problem
with the plant and whoever is operating the plant will
have to address it and there will be regulations from
NEPA that will penalize the operator or the person
responsible for running it so I guess that is the
question. Under normal conditions you won’t get
these odours blowing far distances. And we have had
long discussions with the EHU about this where they
purposely made a setback of the plant of forty meters
so that you won’t even be close enough to the plant to
really smell anything.
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Mr. Foreman: I would just like to add something to that same point, I
think Mr. Espeut was speaking about the collection
system. When it gets into the collection system and it
gets to the plant and you pump it now into the sewage
treatment facility. Now, that is regulated by
standards. We use a European Standard that has to
deal with the residence time from the furthest point to
the wet well, which is really a pumping facility. So you
work out the time of travel and the time of residence
in the wet well of the pump station. And we have
designed and sized the well and the pumps to keep
the residence time below that amount that will allow
the wastewater to become septic and so cause
odours, it all has to do with the collection system. We
are aware of it we took it into account in our design
and that can be demonstrated. Our project manager
is reminding me that we have redundancy for
everything in the sewage treatment plant. One
hundred percent redundancy which means, if one
pump goes down there is another pump fully capable
to remove the peak flows from the system.
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Mr. Gore: In relation to your second question which is the rates
which a private operator or private provider is going to
charge the future home owners, that is regulated by
the Offices of Utilities Regulation. Andrew will explain
the process to you of getting the licence and when
you get a licence you will have to then show them
your costs and you ask them for a rate that you wish
to charge but they establish the rate. I think it is set for
a year but Andrew can speak to that.
Mr. Foreman: I would just like to speak about a technical aspect
before the OUR. The National Water Commission is
an entity that has been around for many years, I think
it came into being in the 60s taking over from a lot of
other smaller water suppliers. Because of that, the
National Water Commission production verses what
the individual pays for water are two different things.
As is well known, they lose a lot of water that they
harvest or they get from whatever source and treat,
and put all of that energy to pump it to your home.
Quite a bit of that is lost in these older systems. With
modern technology newer and better material is
available. Now the losses will be significantly less in a
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Mr. Foreman: brand new system, brand new engineering with
features that will ensure that you stay within a certain
band of pressures with larger pipe sizes. Gore
Developments Ltd. is one of the companies or
developers that really spends some money on their
engineering, and ensures that adequate pipe size is
put in place, that ensures that the energy cost is kept
down which is one component of your cost of water.
So the first thing is that they are putting in a brand
new distribution system that ought to keep the energy
costs lower than what is now with the NWC. The
other aspect to it which is what Mr. Espeut quite
rightly pointed out was, in this system we have an
advanced treatment system which is the reverse
osmosis. What you are doing is to push water
through a membrane and it utilizes quite a bit of
energy. This does indeed increase the cost of water
but the quality of the water delivered to the home
owner will be better. In terms of the cost, any entity
including the National Water Commission has to apply
to the OUR Office of Utility Regulation under their Act
in order to set the tariff or the water rate that you pay.
The private developer has to demonstrate, show all
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Mr. Foreman: their associated costs, and do an economic analysis.
Because apart from having a high water bill, you don’t
really want the operator to be collecting too little either
that he cannot sustain the system and the effort to
determine exactly what the water rate will be is
ongoing. Because everybody knows that nobody
wants to pay that much more. That is ongoing, that
will be submitted to the OUR they will have their own
presentation as a part of that process for the review.
Mr. Espeut: We know that the OUR so far has been quite willing to
grant price increases to the government entities, even
frequently and I am quite sure that the private
company will be able to put up a good case for every
increase that it wants especially when it might say to
the OUR, well if we don’t get the increase that we
want, we cant operate we will have to shut down and
therefore the price increase will be granted. What I
am saying, my question really was if the OUR is our
only guarantor for as economical a price as possible, I
don’t know where we are. I believe that we hold the
blade and the private company holds the handle.
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Mr. Foreman: It will always make a good case and it has the
ultimate wildcard, we will shut down unless we get the
increase. So the consumer will always have to pay
more.
Chairman: Mr. Espeut requires the input from the OUR. I think
the OUR is the government regulatory body and there
is not much input the private developer could say as
to their operations. As we go on I myself as a citizen
of this area found two questions from people in the
area. First to the eastern border of the project there is
the Caribbean Broilers Hatchery and it produces
quite an amount of effluent which passes to the
eastern side of the project, will anything be done
towards reducing this?
Dr. Williams: We are aware of the inflows into the drain coming
from the hatchery, we have actually spoken with the
hatchery and just yesterday I have spoken with one of
the directors and they have made a committment to
have the situation rectified. They were not aware that
the effluent that they were discharging had the high
nutrients and BOD levels that were detected. We
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Dr. Williams: have had discussions with them and even just
yesterday over this public presentation. They have
asked me to state that they have made a
committment to clean up those discharges into the
drain and that recommendation are to be made to
them as how to do it and that they will do it
immediately. So we are aware of it as one of the
main inflows and we have had discussions with them
and their committment is to clean up those
discharges.
Chairman: The final question, I was asked to relay is that if you
go from north to south, through the project down to
the sea you will come from Belmont Park then the
project, then Brampton Farms and then the Old
Harbour Bay fishing community. Now, one resident
from Old Harbour Bay said the aquaculture that is
talking place on Brampton Farms produces some
effluent that affects them and with the furtherance of
development in this area, in this proposed project,
there will be an increased amount of water runoff at a
quicker rate because it is a developed area. Should
there be a concern that there is an increased amount
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Chairman: of water passing through the Old Harbour Bay
community from the project? The run-off from the
project through Brampton Farms, how will it impact on
the residents further south in Old Harbour Bay?
Mr. Richardson: My name is Brian Richardson, I am the hydrologist on
the project. In terms of run off from the site going off
site and affecting Brampton Farms and Old Harbour
Bay. The increase will be minimal, it will be about 8%
so if you are having problems now before the project
is built then they won’t see an increase basically that
is what it means. If they are having problems now off
site after the project is complete they won’t see an
increase in that problem they will still have the
problem which was before the project started. If you
understand what I am saying. The amount, 8% more
is roughly about four metres per second a few metres
per second which is not significant, honestly. And you
have retainment structures right at the dam as it
comes off site. That dam has been there since the
70's I believe and that dam contains everything that
runs off from further up the property that comes
through the property and runs down through
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Mr. Richardson: Brampton Farms anything there is being contained
within that retainment dam for quite sometime before
it moves further on. So in my analysis looking at it,
an 8% increase would be minuscule. I looked at the
WRA’s data and the ODPEM data, within a one
kilometre radius. They have no reported incidents of
flooding and that would include anything within
Brampton Farms and residents just beyond there. I
hope that answers your question.
Chairman: Thank you, Sir, because we don’t want Old Harbour
Bay people to block the road.
Mr. Richardson: It certainly won’t be because of this project.
Chairman: Anymore questions, the lady looks like me.
Lady: Good evening. You mentioned about BOD and
ordinary people like me don’t know what BOD means.
And in addition to that is it that you are just depending
on the word of the company, or do you have anything
in place to ensure that this BOD is kept at the proper
level?
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Dr. Williams: That question had to do with the hatchery inflows,
okay. The BOD is the biochemical oxygen demand. I
am going to ask Mrs. Shirley who is our Chemist to
come and explain what causes that and what the
significance is. In terms of commitment, we have
actually put it in writing to them and given them the
results so that we have a record that we have tested
their outflows and it really is the responsibility of the
regulatory agencies to check. However, because of
this drain running through the developer’s property
and for it not to be a nuisance to the home owners
and also because of the effluent discharges that are
going into the drain there will be monitoring of that
effluent. But they have committed to actually
changing the process that they have now in order to
ensure that their effluent is clear. I hope that
answers. I am going to let Mrs. Shirley explain about
BOD and what causes it and what it means.
Chairman: The background to this is that the hatchery produces
eggs and eggs hatch out to chicken and there is a lot
of organic material that is produced there. So they
have to control their process there.
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Mrs. Shirley: SharonMae Shirley, Environmental Solutions. What
is BOD? BOD can be biological oxygen demand, but
in this case it is really bio-chemical oxygen demand.
In natural waters you have what we call dissolved
oxygen and this is the oxygen that is required to
support life. When you have what you call - are you
hearing me at the back - Thank you very much, when
you have substances in water that when they decay
they use up the available oxygen it exerts what is
called a demand for oxygen. So the higher the bio-
chemical oxygen demand it means that there are
more species in the water that are demanding the
little oxygen that is available. So when you have a lot
of these species it means that you have less
dissolved oxygen for natural organisms to exist on.
When you have an elevated oxygen demand it means
that there are a lot of substances there that are
decaying, that are coming from organic and in some
cases chemical sources. They demand this oxygen
and that causes the pollution of the water that is
there. I hope this answers your question.
Lady: Yes, it does.
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Mrs. Shirley: And as Dr. Williams explained, the tests that were
done were not done by the company, but by an
independent laboratory. So the results that are there
they have accepted and they have agreed to put
corrective measures in place to reduce the pollution
load to this water body. Thank you very much.
Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, there is no one at the
microphone now and from what you have seen this
evening we asked some relevant questions and
people were interested in seeing that their concerns
were addressed and that problems that they foresee
would be mitigated. I am sure most people in the
area would give their blessing to this project, in so far
as they see the possible problems can be tackled and
properly dealt with. And the other is that, citizens of
the area also foresee a certain amount of increase in
the economic activity in the area. So we thank you all
for coming this evening, we thank the presenters, the
developers Mr. Gore and company and the
community participants for coming here this evening
and enlightening us about the project in general.
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Chairman: So in closing, I wish for you all a safe journey home.
Thank you. (Applause)
Adjournment taken at 8:19p.m
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