Waterloo vs. Portico, and Government’s Apparent Bias
The Briceño administration inaugurated the new Coastal Plain Highway earlier today near Gales Point Village. While Prime Minister Briceño and several senior government officials were on hand for the ceremony, a press conference was being held simultaneously in Belize City. At the Radisson this morning, a team of consultants who did extensive work on Waterloo’s proposal for the Port of Belize Expansion Project sat with reporters to discuss what they believe is an obvious preference being given to the Port of Magical Belize. We will get into the prime minister’s responses elsewhere in our newscast, but we begin tonight with a comparison that has been drawn between the processes that Waterloo and Portico underwent, near simultaneously, with NEAC and the Department of Environment, to much different outcomes. Here’s News Five’s Isani Cayetano with our first story.
Watch the full press conference here.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
The Government of Belize was evidently biased in the manner that it went about treating with project proposals for the Port of Magical Belize and the Port of Belize Ltd. That’s what the team that worked diligently in putting together Waterloo’s technical proposal set out to establish when it presented a comparison of both projects. The consultants say that they were dealt with unfairly by the National Environmental Appraisal Committee and the Department of Environment.
Jelle Prins
Jelle Prins, Piedroba Consulting Group
“We were asked to meet a standard, which we did. We were asked to do more, which we did. We were asked to do even more, which we did, until we got denied once, until we got denied twice. The cards were always stacked against us, we were never going to get our approval. So we sit here in front of you to talk about the irrationality of that process. How could one project get its approval, whereas another one that represents the existing Port of Belize that would offer a key piece of national infrastructure to Belize and its people was being denied, and discriminated against.”
To understand government’s predisposition toward the Port of Magical Belize, the Piedroba Consulting Group, a marine infrastructure consultancy firm operating throughout the Americas, compared and contrasted both plans before arriving at a singular conclusion. Several factors were taken into consideration, beginning with the project type.
Luis Prieto y Munoz
Luis Prieto y Munoz, Piedroba Consulting Group
“Port of Magical Belize is a Greenfield project, whereas the Port of Belize is a Brownfield project. To provide a little bit of context, Greenfield means that the project is sited within an environmental area that has been previously undeveloped. It is, for the sake of it, virginal mangrove forests in a pretty much pristine coastal environment. Conversely, the Port of Belize project was sited entirely within the envelope of an existing port facility, a Brownfield project. From an environmental call standpoint, it’s pretty straightforward, the one that is built within a previously disturbed land which has little to no environmental value is less impactful than one that is built within an environment that is currently full of wildlife vegetation and pristine habitat.”
Other issues being looked at from an organic perspective are the biological values of the proposed locations where the channels are being dredged.
Luis Prieto y Munoz
“From a biological value standpoint, the Port of Belize waters have been influenced by the port for many, many years so the biological value there is very limited. There’s a lot of coastal flushing and there’s very little sea grass and there are virtually no corals of significance within that footprint. Conversely, the Port of Magical Belize project, because this channel is being dug entirely within a previously untouched coastal zone, comes very close to existing corals, comes very close to pristine sea grass meadows that support a significant amount of coastal habitat, including manatee feeding grounds and manatee transit areas.”
Side by side, it is apparent that more thought has gone into the technical aspect of Waterloo’s proposal, including the fact that the company spent twenty-seven months on the EIA process. This is against the twelve months that were spent on Portico’s EIA process.
Allan Herrera
Allan Herrera, Nextera Environmental & Engineering Consultants
“Comparing these developments, to me, from the environmental perspective, it seems to be the difference between night and day. There’s just no comparison. There’s no comparison. And if you look back, in the early 2000s, just to compare and just to juxtapose the two developments, in the early 2000s, the development started at the Port of Belize even before an EIA was approved. They began dredging and they began development there, in anticipation of an environmental approval later on. So they already approved the Port of Belize project, including the cruise port, in the early 2000s.”
The proponents of the Port of Belize expansion project anticipated that the undertaking would have been completed within three years, at a price tag of two hundred and fifty million U.S. dollars. On the other hand, Port of Magical Belize, a much larger cruise development project, comes in at four hundred million U.S. dollars and would be ready in five years.
Luis Prieto y Munoz
“From a cost standpoint, the Port of Magical Belize, as I mentioned, is of a larger scale, more dredging, it’s a longer channel, it’s a larger peninsula. So their projected costs are significantly higher. There’s a lot of expense associated with that. Beyond that, it also incorporates the construction of a long highway connection which is not cheap. A bridge over the Sibun River is also very expensive. So the total dollar value is substantially higher than the Port of Belize’s because ultimately, the Port of Belize could have piggybacked on the existing infrastructure which, as I mentioned previously, they would have been enhancing at the same time. At the time that approval was sought, the Port of Belize was fully funded. We had letters of commitment from numerous financial institutions that were prepared to present the debt. We had numerous institutional investors that were willing to take on significant elements of the equity. The project proponent, in his own right, would be able to, the Waterloo Investment Holdings, would be able to fund this entire project.”
Despite signing a Memorandum of Understanding in 2017, the dubious Definitive Agreement in 2020, as well as an Environmental Compliance Plan in 2021, construction is yet to begin at the proposed location for Port of Magical Belize.
Luis Prieto y Munoz
“In this particular case, we produced an EIA and studies and we presented a project that we believe was sound and that was viable for every international standard that was in front of us and that’s the standard to which we produced it. The Port of Magical Belize team produced a different EIA which, in our estimation was, there was value to it but it was a lot thinner than ours, to put it politely. They didn’t exert nearly the same resources that we did in producing studies and to give you an example, the geology included in their EIA was specifically referenced by their in-house geologist as being insufficient, yet that EIA was approved easily, without difficulty, at the first go around with a single public consultation. And we, with a significantly smaller environmental impact, given that this is a Brownfield versus Greenfield project, with a significantly larger volume of study and a significantly higher standard to which we presented our EIA, given that it was being conformed, it was designed to conform to all the prevailing multi-lateral agreements, we were denied again and again and again.”
Isani Cayetano for News Five.
