New facility at port helps coasters
Those clouds of dust that seem to hover 24/7 over the old customs wharf are now a thing of the past. Ann Marie this afternoon found out why.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
The Belize Port Authority now boasts a new coastal marine facility designed to give those who ship goods to the cayes and along the main, a place to dock, load and store their goods.
The facility has been used by a few boatmen for almost six months, but it was not until January first that mariners were told that cargoes can no longer be loaded at the Fort George or Barracks area.
Kay Menzies, chairman of the Port Authority says the new facility offers mariners convenience and security.
Kay Menzies, Chairman, Port Authority
?This facility obviously had a cost to develop, but for them the services are more comprehensive. For example, there is ample parking, space for storage, there is no fighting for berthage here, there is ample berthage space, so that what their getting is much more efficient and allows them much more time to land. It increases their efficiency, they are able to turn around much quicker.
The new port, which sits on five acres of reclaimed land, is built to accommodate thirty-eight, one hundred foot barges any given time.
Kay Menzies
?It cost on the order of four point two million. For that we got a breakwater on the south, which I?ll show you later on. We also have the breakwater that?s behind me and the apron we?re standing on has also been refurbished and we dredged the waters to a suitable depth and provided of course the adequate resources for all that. We?re widening the roadway within that cost as well, the roadway access to the whole port. So out of that money, part of that was self financed by the port and the rest was financing also gotten for the port, but none of it was financed by government or by external debt.?
Ann-Marie Williams
?Where did the money come from??
Kay Menzies
?We did our own banking sources; we sourced our own financing.?
Menzies says the coastal marine facility is expected to pay for itself within five years as growth in the shipping industry will certainly take off.
Kay Menzies
?We realise that the islands are entirely dependent on coaster shipping, so we did not want to implement anything that said that this would be profitable or a revenue gainer. We?re simply looking to pay back for the facility, nothing more than that.
Ports Commissioner John Watson says the construction was done with a well-planned purpose.
John Watson, Ports Commissioner
?From Belize City north, inside the reef, the depths are probably not very much more than six feet, so that is the depth we had to cater to here. But in saying that, we looked at it very carefully and decided that a realistic depth was ten feet, so that we could include the smaller ships which visit this port from the south… We have a vessel with cement coming in here from Honduras from time to time. So this facility was designed around that, it is built very carefully. The ground was reclaimed using clay…to seal it, boulders that were compacted and sand which compacted on top of those boulders. Then we put boulders on again and sand on again and compacted again and we did it even again.?
John Mueller who operates Eco Cargo on Caye Caulker couldn?t agree more.
John Mueller, Operator, Eco Cargo
?It?s excellent. It?s very, very nice. It?s deep enough to get in with some of the deeper boats like this old tug is, there is adequate parking, people can find us, they can get in here, so it?s a nice facility.?
Ann-Marie Williams
?You find it expensive??
John Mueller
?For the facility, no. For what we get, no. SO often we try to get into places and they are sand bars. We have problems getting in, we have problems getting out, so to us that is very expensive for a boat. It gets props, the maintenance goes up, so even though this is a little more, it?s worth it because in the long run it actually, probably saves us money.
Dennis Eiley, Operator, Caribbean Queen Line
?Better than where we were. Less traffic, you can work twenty-four hours and it?s less strain on our engines in that we had to drag the barges through mud. Now we have the water and a nice place to work.?
And this nice place to work is what Eiley feels is costing him too much.
Dennis Eiley
?By the twenty-four hours that we are here, we?re paying almost five hundred dollars a day.
Ann-Marie Williams
?How much do you use to pay prior to coming here??
Dennis Eiley
?A quarter of what we?re paying now. SO let?s say we were paying a hundred dollars now, we were just paying twenty-five dollars at Fort Street.
Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
Menzies says the possibilities for the port are endless and that one-day Belizeans may see a small marina in the area. The possibility is also being considered that fishermen be allowed to fish off the break water.
