November 15^th 2012

Minister Mark Simmonds

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

King Charles Street

London SW1A 2AH

United Kingdom

E-mail: [email protected]

Dear Minister Mark Simmonds:

Few here feel proud that the UK was obliged to intervene to force the Cayman Islands Government (CIG) to transpose into law the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility (FFR) agreement, and to ensure a proper Request for Proposals (RFP) for cruise berthing facilities.

However, given the widespread revulsion at a government which continues to ride roughshod over due process and signed commitments, the vast majority in the Cayman Islands welcomes this “calling to order” of our locally elected government as necessary and urgent, especially in light of the systemic corruption uncovered in the Turks and Caicos Islands after its government was suspended.  An online poll at caymannewsservice.com, indicates (as of today) that 92% of respondents want Premier McKeeva Bush, presently the subject of three police investigations, to “resign now” (1033 votes out of 1120).

The current intervention by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has created expectations of your continuing involvement, in the hope that the UK will fulfill its duty of assuring Caymanians of a government which respects, not only due process and good governance, but the rule of law, transparency, fiscal responsibility, and which respects our fragile environment.  Our immediate concern is the enforcement of that provision of the FFR which CIG found most “difficult” to accept (the third draft of the bill was finally adopted this afternoon) – the requirement of proper procurement processes for significant public projects.

Aside from the cruise berthing project, a major concern for Caymanians is the so-called “ForCayman Investment Alliance” (FCIA) agreement between CIG and the Dart Corporation, the country’s largest real estate developer.  As you are undoubtedly aware, components of this agreement involve divestiture of substantial public assets, and moving the island’s landfill — or “waste management facility” (WMF) – from George Town (GT) to a residential/agricultural area of Grand Cayman deemed environmentally sensitive.

In spite of the scope of the public projects involved and the value of Crown land being “swapped”, none has been submitted to a tendering process, none has been independently scrutinized in terms of “value for money”, and none has been the subject of an independent, objective and unbiased environmental evaluation.  On this score, we find most encouraging your letter of November 2^nd to Premier Bush, in which you welcome new development projects in Cayman, but insist that they “…must be done transparently and properly”, and that you cannot allow any major public procurements “…unless the proper processes have been followed including by complying with international best practice on procurement.”

The proposed closing of the GT  dump and contamination of a new site in the district of Bodden Town (BT) are completely unnecessary, motivated only by Dart’s desire to get the dump as far away as possible from its upscale Camana Bay complex, and particularly from a luxury residential project it plans to add, with no regard for the consequences on the environment or on BT.  Successive governments have failed to ensure proper management of the GT landfill, but the plan to “export” the problem elsewhere, to a pristine area of the island,   has the potential for massive environmental and material damage, and continues to flagrantly violate due process, transparency and good governance:

1. In December 2010, after an open RFP to solve the GT dump problem at the present site, the CTC recommended, as have all past studies, the Wheelabrator tender for a waste-to-energy facility;

2. Although they still remain unused, our previous government had sorting and recycling structures built at the GT landfill, significant space has been freed up after the removal of scrap metal, additional Crown land is available, and all prerequisites are present to accommodate a waste-to-energy facility.

3. The CTC rated the Dart proposal of moving the dump as the worst of all tenders considered (i.e., 6^th of 6), citing “great concern” about the impact of a dump “…in an area that is environmentally sensitive”;

4. Government concurred with CTC’s evaluation, and announced publicly that it was entering into an agreement with Wheelabrator to pursue their proposal;

5. Government then abruptly reversed its decision before any cost/financing arrangements/self-financing plans could be submitted by Wheelabrator, arbitrarily discarding the CTC’s deliberations and recommendation, and announced that it was instead embracing the Dart proposal;

6. No Government entity has ever made the decision that the GT dump must be closed;

7. No independent and scientific Government study has ever been produced to justify this decision;

8. There has been no independent site selection process, if indeed the present dump has to be moved;

9. There has been no Planning Authority permission to build a dump at the Midland Acres site;

10. There has been no public rezoning process to allow a dump in a residential/agricultural zone, far from the source of most of Grand Cayman’s waste (George Town, West Bay and Seven Mile Beach);

11. In spite of the magnitude of the Dart proposal, the environmental risks and the opposition, there has never been a public tendering process (RFP) for closing the GT dump, and moving it anywhere else;

12. Like other components of the FCIA agreement, the proposed dump deal involves the divestiture of substantial public assets — prime Crown land to be “swapped” — but there has never been a public tendering process (RFP) which might ensure that our country is getting “best value for money”;

13.Dart, as the general contractor, has yet to publicly state that it will guarantee its work – i.e., assume full legal liability for the work it would carry out both at the GT dump site and at the proposed BT dump site, although possible contingency damage (health, environment, material, etc.) is huge, and financial claims potentially staggering – claims for which the UK would ultimately be responsible;

14. There has been no public consultation at all, and no solicitation of the consent of stakeholders, while the Minister of Environment, a member of the Legislative Assembly for the targeted district of BT, has refused a public debate in front of his constituents about the proposed dump;

15. A dump is being forced on the people of the BT district to enhance the real estate holdings of a single private company which was well aware of a dump adjacent to the land it purchased (and likely paid much less for it because of the dump), while inflicting material losses on land and business owners who had no prior knowledge of a dump in their area, and discouraging economic growth in BT;

16. Work related to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) at the proposed dump site has begun before any public consultation, before the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the EIA were made public, let alone discussed or adopted; before Planning permission for a dump and before rezoning the site;

17.The TOR, as submitted last week by the Environmental Advisory Board (EAB), completely disregards components initially considered essential by the EAB, which was subsequently “muzzled”.  As per a March 6^th 2012 memo disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, Government Ministers “…instructed the EAB to limit the review to the proposals as presented by DRCL (i.e. Dart Realty Cayman Ltd.) and not to carry out a review of the most suitable overall waste management solution for Grand Cayman.”  The Ministers also “…instructed the EAB not to examine alternatives for the location of the WMF in Bodden Town.”  The proposed TOR is the crippled result of these orders from Government, and the two forthcoming “public meetings” called to discuss the TOR are a sham.

As such, at least this component of the FCIA agreement is illegitimate – certainly unethical, undemocratic, unfair, financially irresponsible, in violation of the Environmental Charter signed with the UK by Premier McKeeva Bush himself in September 2001, in violation of the FFR and the UK’s guidelines for good governance, and possibly illegal.  This is a critical issue for the Cayman Islands and its future.  We respectfully ask the FCO to review the above issues, and to assume its constitutional responsibility to the Cayman Islands as a UK Overseas Territory.

In light of the FCO intervention imposing an open tendering process for cruise berthing facilities, we respectfully ask  that your office demands of CIG:  that it suspends the FCIA dump agreement; that it commissions an independent and unbridled study by the EAB of the best waste management solution for Grand Cayman, along with the “broad public consultation” initially recommended by the EAB (“…public consultation/stakeholder engagement is necessary early in the project cycle to ensure public acceptance…”) ; and that proper RFPs be issued by the Central Tenders Committee following the EAB’s deliberations, including in regards to any divestiture of significant public assets.

The forthright and unambiguous wording of your November 2^nd 2012 letter to Premier Bush convinces us that our expectations are both reasonable and realistic.  Your insistence that “good governance of the public finances and procurement” are a “serious matter” is laudable.  We fully agree that people in the Cayman Islands want to see procurements which have “…been undertaken in a transparent and competitive manner, that due process has been followed, that the project is affordable and represents the best value for money.”

We are delighted to read that you are “ambitious for the economy and people of the Cayman Islands”.  “But there would be serious risks to the economy and public finances from not following the proper procurement processes which have been clearly set out to you by the Chair of the Central Tenders Committee and the Auditor General.  I am now becoming very concerned about the damage this may be causing to the reputation of the Cayman Islands.”

We hope that these standards and the constraints contained in the FFR are applied thoroughly to all major public projects currently underway or under consideration, regardless of the wealth and influence of those promoting them, and alert to the inevitable attempts to deviously circumvent these constraints by “splitting” major projects into components of lesser value.  We look forward to your continued involvement and efforts in ensuring that we in the Cayman Islands enjoy a similar degree of good governance as people in the UK.

Sincerely,

Gregg Anderson

Alain Beiner

Debra Bodden

Charles Clifford

Vincent Frederick

Marleine Gagnon

Arlene J. Whittaker

Coordinating Committee,

Coalition to Keep BT Dump Free

P.O. Box 187

Grand Cayman KY1-1601

Cayman Islands

E-mail:  [email protected]