The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) has called on the Government to halt the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) development in Mammee Bay, St Ann, which is a watershed area. “China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) has started clearing the Roaring River Watershed to put 850 homes, and must be stopped,” JaBBEM President Dr Devon Taylor told The Gleaner . He said CHEC has commenced the destruction of part of the Rio Bueno watershed on the Roaring River Estate in St Ann to build an oversized luxury housing development based on environmental permits (2022-06017-EPP00339; 2023-0617-E00037A-C; 2023-06017-EP00136), which was granted by the Government.
“We are calling on the Government of Jamaica, once again, to halt this project in the Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) (of Dunn’s River Falls in Mammee Bay, St Ann), listen to the environmental defenders and the Jamaican people in the interest of social and environmental justice by relocating this development elsewhere,” Taylor said in a release Tuesday evening. When The Gleaner visited a section of Mammee Bay on Tuesday, heavy-duty equipment was seen on a section of the land, with a small area already bulldozed. The Gleaner was unable to get a comment from CHEC.
THREATS TO WATERSHEDS Earlier this year, communities in the immediate project environment vociferously rejected the proposed development at the developer’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) meeting, and subsequently sent numerous written responses to National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) highlighting environmental, archaeological, and socioeconomic concerns around the unsustainability of the site. Taylor said the project will destroy over 167 acres of coastal forest, decimate biodiversity, impact clean water supply and harm the social fabric of local communities. “This is in clear violation of the Government’s own policy for Jamaica green paper published in 2023, where they listed infrastructural development and forest removal as threats to watersheds,” Taylor noted.
“The Government of Jamaica, without transparency, has yet again sided with negligent developers against the interest of its people and the environment,” Taylor added. He said building on the land is not only ecologically and socially unjust, it also “blatantly dishonours the heritage of our National Hero Marcus Garvey, who according to baptism records, lived on the Roaring River estate with his parents”. By approving CHEC’s proposal for this area which could have been built in a less sensitive environmental location, they have once again chosen profit over people and are again allowing the continued destruction of our ecosystem.
” Taylor said the action further highlights the incompatibility of having NEPA and the economic developmental agency in the same ministry, headed by the same minister..
