Public Consultation Outcome, a Mixed Bag

Port Loyola Resident

The public consultation, notwithstanding the concerns that were raised by environmentalists and members of the general public, was, by and large, a mixed bag.  There seems to have been a fairly equal number of persons in support of the project as there were others who were against the development.

Port Loyola Resident

“If man can land on the moon, why can’t we forward with our port that will create jobs?  People who don’t even live in Port are fighting against us.  Medical expenses, education, housing… who opposes this project, give us jobs, please.  Thanks.  We are supporting Phillip [Willoughby].”

Windell Lemoth, Port Loyola Resident

“You are hiring a lot of people and you are bringing this big business into our neighborhood.  We want jobs, but we‘re also entrepreneurs.  Like I tell you, I own my own business. So we are looking for opportunities to become partners in this thing as well, we don‘t just want to be outside the doors fighting for the crumbs, you know, we want to have seats at the table.  Another person had asked, who is we?  When you talk about we are going to do this and we are going to do that, who is we?  One of my questions is, how could we, as in local, grassroots people from Port Loyola get on these monitoring bodies that you guys will have to make sure that everything goes smooth and that the promises that you made to us will be delivered to us.”

Kenrick Gordon

Kenrick Gordon, Department of the Environment

“Good series of questions indeed.  I wouldn‘t to go back to the initial EIA, but your question was one of the issues that was considered during that deliberation, in terms of the disaster risk and climate change mitigation issue, in terms of what flooding or if there is any flooding impact that would be caused as a result of the project.  So what has happened is that we‘ve asked and they‘ve presented on the risk management in terms of the modeling, so that is now incorporated within this EIA.”