Even before work on the Cayman Islands Environmental Assessment Agreement (EAA) that will cost us $2.5M has started one leading dive hotelier, Sunset House, has warned about the serious impact dredging could do to our dive industry.

Has he jumped the gun?

Shouldn’t we wait for the EAA to be completed before predictions of dire consequences to our country are banded about?

Keith Sahm, Sunset House’s General Manager doesn’t think so.

He has appeared on local television, CITN/Cayman27, warning us all that the construction of the new cruise port will “create a huge environmental impact for all the corals on the top of this beautiful underwater mountain chain that we call the Cayman Islands.”

In iNews Cayman’s Front Page story today headed “Tough Lessons: Cayman Islands looking at Bimini for what not to do” from Bahama Islands Info (see link: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/tough-lessons-cayman-islands-looking-at-bimini-for-what-not-to-do/),he points to the dredging in Bimini, Bahamas, that he says is taking a toll on that island’s marine resources to make way for a cruise port.

Sahm says, “Hopefully, we can learn from others’ mistakes and we won’t have that happening here in Cayman.”

The Bahama Islands Info story states there has been an “onslaught of criticism of the project” and quotes from our own marine artist and scientist Dr. Guy Harvey:

“The islands of Bimini are an environmental gem and every step should be taken to conserve these resources.”

Also, world record holder and TV celebrity Neal Watson expressed deep concern over the Bimini project saying, “Having started the first recreational dive operation in Bimini in 1975 and still involved in promoting diving in Bimini, I am devastated by the pending catastrophic event about to occur in this diver’s paradise.”

Thousands in the Bahamas have signed a petition to enact a Freedom of Information Act and an Environmental Protection Act.

We have the FoI act here in Cayman that doesn’t have any big teeth and can be challenged or ignored and our Environmental Protection Act (EPA) was passed in our Legislative Assembly to much positive applause world wide but hasn’t gone any further so is not law.

I suspect our government will only make the EPA law when all the looming projects that would have been subject to the EPA have been approved without having to bother with it.

Despite all the postulating by government that they will seriously consider everything in the EAA, I have to register my doubts. It is very difficult to believe a government that campaigned on a One Man – One Vote and immediately after getting elected reneged on it.

In a related story also in today’s iNews from The Guardian UK “Great Barrier Reef’s ‘unprecedented’ threat from dredging, dumping” (see link: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/great-barrier-reefs-unprecedented-threat-from-dredging-dumping/), it points out how the proponents of dredging misrepresent the “facts” regarding the damage done to the environment by the dredgers.

This article states:

“The mining industry has pointed to research showing the degradation of the reef [Great Barrier Reef, Australia] is down to cyclones, bleaching and coral-eating starfish, rather than dredging. The Queensland Resource Council has branded groups such as WWF as dishonest, launching a series of TV ads to argue its case.

“But in an assessment of the health of the Great Barrier Reef released last week, Unesco said it had “concern” over the dredging program, querying why work on ports had begun before a long-term strategic plan was in place.

“The society’s report states that previous dredging, such as at Hay Point in 2006, damaged corals, contrary to industry claims.

‘“The evaluation of the impacts at Hay Point dredging stated that most of the coral colonies were healthy and that more than 95% of corals were undamaged,” the report said. “However, the way that health and damage of corals was recorded at Hay Point clouds this interpretation.

‘“Corals that had dead patches, but that were believed to be recovering because of new growth, were grouped together with corals that had no damage at all. Recording damage in this way has obscured the fact that these corals were damaged and underestimated the impacts of the dredging.”’

With all reports it is not what they say that really counts it is what they leave out.

We have been warned and we should seriously look at what has gone before. But the “we” in this case might not be the “we” as in government.

They often have their own agenda.