Another Round of Public Consultation for Waterloo Project

The Department of the Environment hosted another round of public consultations on Friday in Belize City, where stakeholders and other interested parties raised concerns about the proposed Port of Belize Expansion Project which, once approved, will see the construction of a cruise terminal in Port Loyola.  In the Belize harbor, Port Coral which is being developed by Stake Bank Enterprise is presently under construction.  Should two other projects, including the Port of Magical Belize and Waterloo be given the green light, a total of three cruise terminals will be built in Belize District.  During the consultation which lasted a little over three hours, Stake Bank Project Manager, Troy Gabb, weighed in on the role of the D.O.E.

Troy Gabb

Troy Gabb, Project Manager, Stake Bank Enterprise

“The DOE’s responsibility, by law, should look at the environment, the economy and the social impact.  So the environmental impact, the economic impact and the social impact.  I have not heard anything, plus I am in the same business that you are attempting to get in, no one has ever consulted with us who have over a hundred million U.S. dollars invested in the ground right now.  There has been no significant economic impact that I have seen or heard of at this point in time.  Nobody has consulted us, nobody has spoken to us.  As far as we are concerned, when we speak to the cruise lines, and I speak to every single cruise line, every single cruise executive, I have their email and I have their contact numbers, and everyone of them has been saying to us that as far as the cruise industry is concerned there is going to be no growth over the next ten years that goes beyond one point five million passengers. We keep hearing about the fact that if we build the port there’s going to be a huge amount of people coming.  Just look at the BTB schedule for the next three years, everything is under seven hundred thousand passengers.  Every single one of their projections or the schedule that they have programmed for the next three years is under seven hundred thousand passengers.  That’s another fact. This is my last question, or my last position.  Where are those passengers and ships are going to come from?  Anybody that knows the cruise industry not only knows that they are planning way ahead, but it requires to have actual vessels to come here.  We keep hearing that if we build these ports that so much people are going to come.  That is a fallacy, that is an economic farce that you all continue to say.  There is going to be no more increase in passengers that are going to come to Belize because cruise ships don’t work like that.”