ACCORDING to a Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology Commission document seen by The Tribune it made a variety of recommendations and requested that Resorts World Bimini submit certain documents after their request for additional cubic yards of dredging materials was granted. The document said:
A. In order to mitigate the risks associated with the operation of the variance request, the BEST Commission recommends:
That a competent Independent Consultant be engaged to oversee, monitor and control the operation of the placement area as detailed in CM -2.13,
The Independent Consultant must be empowered to oversee as well as stop operations if the continued operation would undermine the discharge area leading to cascade failure of the system,
The Independent Consultant must have demonstrated ability operation in a similar environment with greater than 20 years’ experience in the area,
The Independent Consultant must also have the necessary support staff to monitor and control the process over the duration of the works, and provide all reports of its operations including turbidity monitoring criteria, locations and frequency and make them available to the Docks committee and government agencies with statutory authority of the engineering works.
Oversight of the activities and Independent Consultant must be by the Bahamian Environmental Firm and Engineer of Record for the Bimini Ferry Terminal Project Variance request, daily reports of its site operations must be prepared and submitted with the required signatures.
B. The Bimini Bay Ferry Terminal must submit as an addendum to the EIA, EMP the suitability of structural design and controls, as well as management of these proposed spoil management structures for review to substantiate good industry practices to protect against failure and ruinous release of sediments into the environment. In addition, the following common good industry practices lacked in the submittals, we strongly recommend the project to submit to BEST to substantiate the stability of the spoil placement structure:
Geotechnical analysis to support foundation strengths
Foundation under-seepage and dike seepage control
Physical properties to substantiate suitability of materials to be used for dike construction (including design shear strength, consolidation, Atterberg limits, etc)
Main dike and cross-dike lifts/compaction
Dike height and freeboard rain event calculations
Citation to design standards used in the engineering design of the containment
Inspection and Monitoring Programme during dike construction to ensure material is placed according to engineering standards.
Dredged Material Disposal Operations Plan
Dredged Material Inspection, Monitoring, and Maintenance Programme for life of the facility.
In addition, The Bimini Bay Ferry Terminal must submit as an addendum to the EIA, EMP the following:
Emergency response plans that specify equipment, rouses and procedures to react to and implement appropriate countermeasures to contain, control and manage any accidental or unintended release of material and sediments from the disposal and dewatering systems.
A site stabilisation and decommission plan must also be developed to return the site to its pre operational state.
Bathymetric survey in the side of placement area to the southward of the Bimini channel and harbour.
Copy of permit for use of Crown land for placement of the dredge material and dewatering exercise.
The Developer must undertake a study to assess the downstream risks to the community in the event of catastrophic failure; it must encompass and factor in rainfall or other weather events likely to impact the area during operation.
Comments
242orgetslu 10 years, 5 months ago
PLEASE READ AND PASS ON! This is the link where the full story is: http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/MA…
Across the inky-blue Gulf Stream from Florida, near the sheer edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a new island is emerging from the sea. Although it bears the appealing name Ocean Cay, this new island is not, and never will be, a palm-fringed paradise of the sort the Bahamian government promotes in travel ads. No brace of love doves would ever choose Ocean Cay for a honeymoon; no beauty in a brief bikini would waste her sweetness on such desert air. Of all the 3,000 islands and islets and cays in the Bahamas, Ocean Cay is the least lovely. It is a flat, roughly rectangular island which, when completed, will be 200 acres and will resemble a barren swatch of the Sahara. Ocean Cay does not need allure. It is being dredged up from the seabed by the Dillingham Corporation of Hawaii for an explicit purpose that will surely repel more tourists than it will attract. In simplest terms, Ocean Cay is a big sandpile on which the Dillingham Corporation will pile more sand that it will subsequently sell on the U.S. mainland. The sand that Dillingham is dredging is a specific form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, which is used primarily in the manufacture of cement and as a soil neutralizer. For the past 5,000 years or so, with the flood of the tide, waters from the deep have moved over the Bahamian shallows, usually warming them in the process so that some of the calcium carbonate in solution precipitated out. As a consequence, today along edges of the Great Bahama Bank there are broad drifts, long bars and curving barchans of pure aragonite. Limestone, the prime source of calcium carbonate, must be quarried, crushed and recrushed, and in some instances refined before it can be utilized. By contrast, the aragonite of the Bahamian shallows is loose and shifty stuff, easily sucked up by a hydraulic dredge from a depth of one or two fathoms. The largest granules in the Bahamian drifts are little more than a millimeter in diameter. Because of its fineness and purity, the Bahamian aragonite can be used, agriculturally or industrially, without much fuss and bother. It is a unique endowment. There are similar aragonite drifts scattered here and there in the warm shallows of the world, but nowhere as abundantly as in the Bahamas. In exchange for royalties, the Dillingham Corporation has exclusive rights in four Bahamian areas totaling 8,235 square miles. In these areas there are about four billion cubic yards—roughly 7.5 billion long tons—of aragonite. At rock-bottom price the whole deposit is worth more than $15 billion. An experienced dredging company like Dillingham should be able to suck up 10 million tons a year, which will net the Bahamian government an annual royalty of about $600,000.
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