Wetland worry

Publication: Sunday Sun
Paper Page: 32A
Paper Date: Sun, Apr 18, 1999
Byline: Antoinette Connell

A PROPOSED residential project in the heart of one of the island's few remaining wetlands is awaiting Government's stamp of approval.

If approved, The Longbeach Traditional Neighbourhood Project, which involves reclaiming half of the Chancery Lane, Christ Church wetlands, would target middle-income earners.

The multi-million-dollar project is so sensitive that several Government agencies have had the draft report since April last year but still no word has been given on it.

Proposed by prominent Bridgetown business interests, part of the project includes filling in at least half of the wetland in order to make it economically viable.

But concerned environmentalists said that even if only half of the wetland was taken up, eventually human needs would take over and the entire area would succumb to the development.

"While I recognise the need for housing and development, we need to consider the existing alteration to the natural landscape of Barbados and the degree to which housing and other projects are springing up," one environmentalist told the Sunday Sun yesterday.

"We have to be exceedingly careful and weigh profoundly the consequences of large-scale development in this last remaining natural area of Barbados' south coast. If an error is made, it will be lost and gone forever."

The Chancery Lane wetland is made up of 80 acres and consist of the almost extinct buttonwood mangrove, machineel forest, cliffs and cave habitat.

Environmental experts said to reduce its size would compromise it. Since 1968, there had been seven applications to develop the area, two of which were refused in 1990 and 1991.