Placencia Lagoon Controversy Exposes Permit Violations

A dredging dispute on the Placencia Peninsula is turning into a bigger fight over who gets a say in development decisions. Residents were already outraged after a contractor breached permit conditions while extracting sand from the Placencia Lagoon. After intervention by the Department of Environment and the Mining Unit, the Placencia Village Council launched its own review, and says it uncovered multiple violations. Now, the council is pushing for a seat at the decision-making table on environmental clearances and mining permits. Councilor Kristine Small says the impact goes beyond one village, warning that any development along the peninsula affects the livelihoods of everyone who calls it home.

 

Kristine Small, Councilor, Placencia Village

“The big thing hear is I am hearing it is in the Seine Bight jurisdiction, but what people are failing to understand is that anything that happens up the Peninsula directly impacts both Placencia and Seine Bights Village. So we are not happy that we are not being included with any of the information. Not only is it affecting our ecosystem in the lagoon, be it manatees, the sea gras beds for sea creatures where all the fish comes, the marine life, it is a habitat. It also affects the residence, the tour guides, the people of the entire peninsula who gets food from the lagoon. They go fish. Our message is, it is important and I cant stress this more, there has to be oversight. We keep hearing we don’t have enough people to look over everything. Oh when we give them, we expect them to. Clearly they have been violating the rules. So we want to appoint someone to do the oversight, someone we trust to ensure things are going properly going forward.”

 

The Placencia Village Council says it is hopeful that the government will include them in future decision-making processes.

 

Who Pays the Price? Coastal Growth Faces Mounting Scrutiny

 

A warning from the opposition tonight as concerns grow over development along Belize’s coast. UDP caretaker for Belize Rural South, Gabriel Zetina, is accusing the government of sacrificing long-term sustainability for short-term gain. His sharp criticism comes amid complaints from residents of Ambergris Caye and the Placencia Peninsula about ongoing dredging operations. Zetina says no one is stepping forward to take responsibility, even as development pushes ahead and the environmental stakes continue to rise.

 

Gabriel Zetina, UDP Caretaker, Belize Rural South

“To them this is business as usual. They sell our seabed’s, they sell it as commodity. The mayor says oh its Belmopan, the area representative says I have nothing to do with this, it is Belmopan. No one wants to take responsibility. They say it is the DOE that grants these things, the permit. Then the DOE when they address the residents say we did our studies and we asked your local leaders to provide a letter, the letter of no objection. We say, see it here, if they had objected we would not have granted a permit, so who is to blame? We are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs just to sell the feathers. In Placencia residents for weeks have watched in horror while dredging machines tear into one of the most biodiverse areas.”

 

 

Zetina says residents of Belize Rural South will continue to demand transparency where information on dredging and development operations are lacking.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: