Campaigners to meet Saturday over Emerald Sound
(CNS): Following the approval by the Central Planning Authority of the controversial South Sound development – Emerald Sound campaigners will be meeting on Saturday (this evening 6 August) to discuss the next step in their efforts to stop the projectfrom going ahead. Katrina Jurn who is one of the individuals spearheading the opposition to the precedent setting development is asking people to meet at 5pm at South Sound community centre. Although the campaigners were disappointed by the CPA’s decision Wednesday she said they are not giving up.
Not entirely surprised the CPA approved the application as a result of the narrow criteria used to deicide planning applications Jurn says that the consideration regarding the coastal works license will have to cover the bigger picture and the marine issues which is where the greatest concern about the development lies.
Also Jurn said the campaigners into to appeal the decision to CPA a process which again will consider the application in a wider context.
The approval however, has brought into focus the extremely limited power that residents have in a neighbourhood to prevent planning applications. Jurn says that perhaps only one resident among the 500 home owners canvassed in the 1500ft zone was indifferent to the project. Despite this along with a petition of more than 1100 signatures of others worried about the far reaching environmental implications and risks planning did not consider the position of residents.
“We were hoping that the CPA would make the right decision and this would not be such a long process but we must now turn our attention to the appeal and stopping the coastal works approval,” Jurn stated this week.
She said the battle would continue and the people involved in the campaign to stop Emerald Sound would be meeting at 5pm on Saturday at the South Sound Community Centre to discuss the appeal against the CPA’s decision and how best to impress upon government their objections regarding the coastal works stage of the application.
Category: Science and Nature
I am surprised to see such negative comments posted here which have nothing to do with the subject matter. If you are concerned about the have’s and have not’s then you should start your own petition elsewhere.
For those concerned about the environmental impact this will have on South Sound please come out in support because as a country that was founded by the sea we have a right as a people and community to stop this project. I am extremely concerned aboutthe people here who have no foresight for the future generations and urge you to disregard the nonsense.
WHAT these objectors NEED to meet about it who is going to start taking up all these stupid signs that are in the middle of the road. I was walking my young son through South Sound today and HAD to go out into the MIDDLE of traffic to get around them.
PLEASE move these before someone gets killed!
You are so right. But that is not new, the Walkers have rocks out in the roadway so you cannot even fix a flat tyre there. When they say OUR South Souns they mean THEIR South Sound!
Not when I drove past this morning!!
And you can bet none of those signs have Planning permission. Do as I say not as I do. Unbelievable.
Having driven along the South Sound Road this morning the objection signs are displayed in similar positions as the real estate signs, just off the road. The real estate for sale signs far out number the objection signs! Do they need planning permission? XXXX
Real estate signs do not need permission. The anti-emerald sound signs DO need but don’t have. It’s okay for some to break the law but not others. Even considering that most appear to be placed IN the road reserve not on private land. Objectors to development breaking the Planning Law!! Thats cayman. Rich get away with everything!!
PR much?
I just hope the ES is not a done deal, because from what I have read and can understand permission to cut the road for the canal is not yet give. If and whenever approval is given to dredge this area God help the people of Randyke,Fairbanks and Old Crew Road. Have we forgotten Ivan and the seas that were all up in those areas?
FOR THE PROTESTERS:
Some of you have multi-milliion dollar homes on lots that are a half acre to an acre large, in South Sound. So……its OK for you to detstory the natural coastline's flora and fauna to create your little 'oasis'….but the second someone does something that you dont agree with, its THEM destorying the flora and fauna habitat and not you.
I can barely drive down South Sound anymore looking at those signs, parked in front of multi-milliion dollar properties, who destroy the coastline habitat so that they can have their faminial oasis on the coast……
Come on people, TELL me why this isnt hypocrisy? I dont get it. So YOU can destroy the coastal habitat, but when others' do, THEY are the evil ones?
IM JUST SAYING………..yee that liveth in glass houses, shouldnt throw stones……..(enjoy your multimillion dollar properites on the coast).
You are right, and God knows that I know it firsthand from experience. Ever since I was a baby I have been in South Sound and I have watched it being slowly but surely eroded and made desolately lifeless in places and damaged in others and poisoned and poached and encroached upon by greed and vain pomposity, ignorance and idiocy. If some of those who are somewhat new around here could have seen what it used to be like (and you can take that "but Ivan did it" drivel and shove it) then they might just shed a tear. The disrespect for the natural beauty and bounty that Cayman used to have so much of is disrespected and ridiculed for some asinine reason by complete asses. The heritage is used as an insult by ignoramuses. The very soldier crabs have been poisoned out of existence (or simply run over), deliberately, because someone was putting in a landscape that did not belong there in the first place, why these people hate lion's tongue and seagrape so much I do not know. The corals have already been damaged by the effluent which comes from that decrepid excuse for a brain fart which is Randyke Gardens and the like (coral does not like raw sewage effluent). Only a moron/scheister would build or buy a house built low in a wetland area in the first place but there you go, it is only everybody else's insurances which goes out the roof. Every roving crackhead seems to think that it is okay to take conch and whatever else by the hundreds (and they have done it with relative impunity).
That does not, however, in any way shape or form, make what they have been given permission to do right or good in any way. XXXXX
15.35. Thank you. This says it all. I suggest everyone also read Knal's blog for the real reason these people are objecting.
I've read it, and the only few articles posted over the last couple of weeks…
AGREED!!!! No one protested a 48,000 square foot house for ONE family. (I get it — you have hundreds fo millions of dollars……..dont need to snub it all in our faces………..Im sure you are a nice guy, but…..REALLY??)
what?…..i feel sorry for you……
Those people building alongside South Sound coastline, maybe destroying its fauna and flora to make their little oasis; however, no one in the area seems to complain about it, because they don't see it as a threat to them and the rest of the diverse beauties of South Sound. I personally think that our zoning laws for designating land for certain uses need revolutionary changes. The remainder coastline for South Sound should be restricted from residential use; i.e., such lands between the sea and main road.
I think that the protestors have every right to protest and I don't think they are being hypocritical, because the Emerald Development, is what it is… a massive development that will forever and significantly change the landscape of South Sound and make the area more vulnerable to rough seas from storm surge. Something of great significance and size should be addressed to the local community, and their voices should be heard and considered if they oppose the project just next door to them. This is not like one homeowner building his mansion on a small lot. This development takes up pretty much the entire area of South Sound, and the beauty of South Sound with its Pine Neddles, Mangroves, and wild life is forever destroyed and replaced for shipped palm trees and shrubs.
If it was a commercial area, it wouldn't had been so bad, but it is a residential area, and the development includes dredging a canal into theSouth Sound. They talk about the hurricane seas has always been able to make it inland. You could reason about it as well in East End. But what the dredging will do, is make it easier for the sea to invade more inland if there is weather from the south.
I feel sorry for the South Sound community regarding this massive change that will come to them. It is not welcome and they initially moved there for its scenery. I can't see how you can call them hypocritical, because building a house is not building on acres of development, and dredging into the sound. And apparently, no MLA appears to be defending their cause unless there is some political interest or some development done in their backyard. So pretty much they appear to be on their own.
I wish the develops the best. They have the right to make their investments. But I can imagine they will be around people who they will have to build large walls to not see their frowning faces.
Emerall Sound development is only 80 homes and 180 apartments on 91 acres. Compare that with San Sebastion development that no one seems to mind. That is 150 something apartments on 12 acres! what about the water that that displaced. really dont think this is such a big development as you put it. if you put 8 san sebastions there you could have a 1200 apartments there. think your missing the big point here or misleading everyone.
The big poitn being the canal and moving the road to please a developer.
You need to get a real job or a wife or something, Libertarian. You must spend hours posting and – alas – well, you need to get a real job or a wife or something.
Is there a way to opt-out of news updates on this every couple hours?
It's approved, move on.
perhaps then you should stop obsessively reading and commenting on this news then. easy.
You all may notice that the objectors have better things to do than battling the Emerald Sound PR team on Cayman News Service. We have proven our point. And here are 500 + of the over 1,100 not affraid to sign thier name to the objection to this development:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ci345es/petition.html
This sort of thing destroys any and all good will to the Emerald Sound protesters… http://knalsaywha.blogspot.com/2011/08/rugger-buggered.html?m=1
I challenge one alleged supporter of this project to give his/her name. ONE.
Only one person, a contractor from East End hoping to get work from the development, has publicly given his support for the project – beyond the Developer, his spokesperson and team. Only ONE.
I've been to the meetings, listened to the radio shows and talked to tonns of people in South Sound and beyond.
I believe these supposed posters who claim to support Emerald Sound are trying to mislead the public.
Knal Say Wha has got a real axe to grind with the South Sound objectors. But of course he too is anonymous! And he is struggling in his attempt to discredit the objectors – who are upstanding and outstanding citizens of this country and therefore turning to lies and defamation on his website.
CNS – This is a real concern and I hope that you will post this.
ah…how the tide has turned….. a victory for truth and common sense……thanks knal