Jermaine Francis, Gleaner Writer

The debate over whether or not the Goat Islands, located in the Portland Bight Protected Area, could be used as a trans-shipment hub has been deemed premature by the man who was commissioned to head an environmental management scoping study on the area.

Dr Conrad Douglas, whose team conducted the Port Authority of Jamaica-commissioned Environ-mental Management Scoping of the Portland Bight, said there was not enough evidence available at this time for a fair debate to ensue over any environmental impact a hub may have on the Goat Islands.

Douglas made the remarks at the 'Logistics Hub: The Economy vs The Environment' symposium put on by the University of the West Indies and the Caribbean Maritime Institute, last Saturday.

He said the design and the intended plan for the islands have not yet been presented and, as such, assessments about the environmental impact were useless at this time.

"Because you don't know the horizontal and vertical profile of the project; because you don't know what the project entails and where it will be, you cannot proceed to make statements about the environmental impact," Douglas said.

Determining suitability

Douglas noted that a comprehensive environmental impact assessment must be done on the Goat Islands to determine its suitability.

"An environmental impact assessment attempts to predict the sort of impacts that could take place in a given area, having identified and critically assessed the design and impacts of the project. None of this is in the public domain at this time. We don't know the engineering designs and so on," Douglas added.

He said they were just at the stage where they were looking at what had been the area's historical use, what was its legal status, and what could be done in general on the Goat Islands.

Continued here:

Goat Islands debate premature - Douglas