The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

SAVE The Bays said yesterday that the Christie administration’s proposed revision of the Planning and Subdivisions Act (PSA) is bad for Bahamians as it allows the government to give this country’s resources away to foreign developers “for next to nothing”.

STB questioned how every member of the PLP in 2010 voted for the PSA to pass in the House of Assembly during the Ingraham administration, but it is now considered ill conceived and poorly drafted.

It comes the day after Senator Keith Bell branded the PSA a “horrendous” piece of legislation with “adverse consequences” to Bahamians that should have never been passed under the previous FNM government.

Mr Bell added that he simply did not understand what the objective was in passing the legislation in 2010 until it was invoked in the case of Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard as a part of an ongoing saga of allegations that he encroached on Crown land without the relevant government approvals at his Lyford Cay estate.

He insisted that he had no interest in this matter, saying it was an example that “essentially it is dangerous to buy land in this country”.

However, the environmental group insisted that the government’s proposed changes will enable less control on how land is developed, ensures illegal developers receive a slap on the wrist for breaking the law, decreases public consultation and will allow fewer environmental protections among other things.

“Though it could have been stronger in a number of areas,” STB said yesterday, “the act was extremely progressive, giving average citizens a far greater say in how land is developed and used in The Bahamas, while ensuring that our precious natural resources are preserved for the benefit of future generations of Bahamians.

“The act has already proven to be a successful barrier to several foreign developers whose plans were not in the interest of environmental preservation or the Bahamian public.

“Unfortunately, there have been a number of instances where the PLP government has chosen not to enforce the rules in the act that require developers to have obtained permission for their developments, which give Bahamians an opportunity to take part in the process and, in at least one case – the Blackbeard’s Cay case – where a decision of the Supreme Court which requires the government to abide by the rules set out in the act has simply been ignored by the PLP government.”

STB said while the PLP government continues to ignore the court’s decision in Blackbeard’s Cay and while other legal cases are before the courts where environmentalists are trying to get the government to follow the rules, the PLP government is now seeking to change those rules.

The environmental group said the government is seeking to replace the act with one that overturns many of the important rules designed to give the average citizen a say over how land is used in The Bahamas.