MLA’s say WMF wll not affect BT

Bodden Town’s UDP MLAs on Saturday underscored the distance of the area’s proposed waste-management facility from main roads and residential areas, promising a full environmental study before making any decisions.

At the same time, they told a neighbourhood meeting that a proposal to change Cayman’s electoral system to single-member constituencies was likely to boost costs, limit voters’ access to MLAs and create multiple demands for duplicate infrastructure in the new districts.

Speaking to a neighbourhood meeting in the Moonbeam Drive area of Bodden Town on Saturday evening, both Dwayne Seymour and Mark Scotland, also Minister of Health, addressed a series of local issues, but touched on wider questions of closing the George Town Landfill, replacing it with a Bodden Town facility, and the one man-one-vote petition campaign, seeking to redraw Cayman’s electoral boundaries.

“You have all heard about the ForCayman Investment Alliance, the FCIA,” Mr Scotland told the audience of no more than 25, referring to the Dart-government $1.5 billion, 20-year programme of infrastructure and community development, intended to boost economic and employment opportunities in exchange for concessions on land and building permits.

“The proposed waste-management facility is just east of Midland Acres, about a mile off the road, north of Breakers,” he said, underscoring the remoteness of the FCIA project, estimated to cost between US$25 million and US$35 million, from local businesses and homes.

“We have a technical team of about 30 agencies,” he said listing various departments and authorities, “and Dart Engineering studying this. We are doing an EIA and are talking about how to mitigate any impact. The facility will replace the George Town site, but we are not moving George Town, which was never done properly.

“We will have one new site which will give us many years of waste management and we are looking at long-term plans to manage waste properly,” he said, pointing to an outline schedule, although he did not name any dates.

“The studies will be ongoing,” Mr Scotland said. “There will be public consultations and meetings. Following all of that review, then decisions will be made. Nothing has been decided yet,” he said.

Responding to an audience query, the Minister alluded to an earlier offer by Premier McKeeva Bush to lead community activists and others on a tour of similar US-based facilities.

“The question is about taking a wide cross-section of persons to look at waste-management facilities, which are mostly in Florida and Georgia,” he said.

“People think that this will look like the George Town Landfill,” he said, seeking to reassure Bodden Town residents, whose Coalition to Keep Bodden Dump Free have been vocal in their opposition to the proposal.

“That is not what the facilities are, so we will take that cross-section of people, they will see it and then return and they can pass the word to others. It’s clean. It’s friendly. It works. They are across the roads from shopping centres and residential areas. There is a big difference between a “dump” and a “waste-management site”, and Bodden Town is not going to be anything like the dump in George Town,” he said.

The disposal site, he said, would have “no effect” on Bodden Town business or residents. “In George Town, within one mile of the dump, we have businesses and 7,000 people living. The new site is a mile from the main roads, will have a buffer around it and the area can grow and develop. It will be done in a clean, green and environmentally friendly way. The site is between two old quarries, existing lakes, so not much can come close to it anyway.”

In a sort of tag-team handoff, Mr Seymour followed, adding that the new facility was “not being taken lightly. We will do our best to ensure it is done properly,” then handed back to Mr Scotland to address the electoral petition.

“There has been a petition going around, and they want to have a referendum on one man, one vote later this year for the upcoming election. The government has agreed and is supporting that we put the referendum on the day of the [May 2013] election, like we did with the constitution.

”We all support one man, one vote,” he said, but suggested that staging a separate ballot in November to apply to the 2013 election “would be costly”.

While saying it was up to each voter to decide, Mr Seymour detailed the UDP’s opposition in terms applying to any timing.

“Some things you couldn’t do.” he said. “In Bodden Town you can go to three representatives, four in George Town and West Bay, but not in one man, one vote. You can go only to one person.
“There is also a certain amount of infrastructure in each area, and each representative is going to want to show he’s doing something for his constituents, so they will want their own post office, their own police station, whatever, in their area. This will drive up costs.

“I think a lot of this is politics,” Mr Seymour finished, accusing the UDP’s opposition. “They are thinking ‘let’s put pressure on the government so the government doesn’t find employment for people, doesn’t do a waste-management facility for people.

“But this electorate is so smart. You know how to sift out the silliness and do the right thing,” Mr Seymour said.