NCL mega-tourism project in its final stages

Another mega development project that has come under a lot of fire from various quarters is the Norwegian Cruise Line’s multimillion dollar port of call on Harvest Caye. As of mid-April, the controversial environmental impact assessment that was tendered had been revised and the National Environmental Appraisal Committee has given the nod to the investors. Today, Chief Environmental Officer, Martin Alegria, gave an update saying that the Environmental Compliance Plan has been finalized and the green light has been given to the company from an environmental standpoint.

Martin Alegria, Chief Environmental Officer

Martin Alegria

“What I know is that yes, the processes that NEAC requested to approve the EIA which we did, the NEAC did, the DOE accepted it then we started development of the Environmental Compliance Plan, which is all the details, the nitty-gritty. Ninety percent or so of that was amenable to the investors except we were just talking about financial sustainability except the environmental monetary fee that is attached to such compliance programs or environmental contracts. And that stood out for some week; that we were back and forth within the department, the different ministries and the investors and at the end we agreed to the level of funding but it might not be adequate or comfortable for us to do the job needed but there were caveats in there if this happens then this will kick in and etcetera, to the extent that we feel that the department and other key agencies comfortable for at least the next five years we have a proper monitoring program that we will have NCL and other similar ECPs with other projects or developers that we will be monitoring and supervising that things be done correctly. This monitoring fee is not only the department of the environment fee it is multi-stakeholder approach where we will even try to invite civil society private sector, key component of the monitoring to make sure that they are part of the inspection and supervision that these investments are doing the right thing and are doing the things they promise to do in the ECP, it’s not so much promise but it is committed to doing in the ECP; so again NCL as far as I know, we had that little step that took a little longer than but we succeeded in passing it and now we are in the implementation phase.”

All that’s left now is for the terms of that agreement to be finalized. NCL intends to commence its port of call for the 2015-2016 cruise ship tourism season.