Welcome to BEST

The Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) are concerned more about what is omitted by the just-published SDO for Southlands than be what is contained.

The most serious omission is that of the impact of this development when added to next door Atlantic Ltd. Development. The people depend on the government to consider the combined effects of neighbouring developments. It is totally unacceptable for the government to treat these adjacent developments as though there is no interaction, no combined impacts: environmental, visual, on traffic, on power supply and prices, on housing availability and prices, and on the cultural integrity of the neighbourhood.

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On July 26, Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield headlined a twenty-minute television and radio broadcast that explained Special Development Orders (SDOs) and attempted to justify the issuance of an SDO for the proposed hotel at Southlands. The Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) believes the Minister and her Cabinet colleagues failed in this attempt. In our view, the approval of this project denigrates the planning system and reduces sustainable development concerns to irrelevance. It discounts public opinion in favour of political ends. It negatively impacts the environment, coastline and, most importantly, generations to come. It creates significant precedence for use of public lands by private developers.

Minister Butterfield described SDOs as an important tool used for responding to strategic, national issues and the development needs of the day. The Government has not shown that this particular hotel is strategic or of national importance. Bermuda’s economy is booming, prices for housing are rising out of reach of the average Bermudian, inflation is chipping into everyone’s income. Further rapid expansion of the economy will worsen cost of living issues for middle and lower income Bermudians.

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