A se­ries of ar­ti­cles have ap­peared in lo­cal print me­dia crit­i­cal of the mul­ti-pur­pose port be­ing planned for east­ern To­co Bay. In re­sponse, we note that we were en­gaged in 2017 to con­firm the site se­lec­tion for this port and to con­cep­tu­al­ly plan, de­sign and car­ry out pre­lim­i­nary en­gi­neer­ing for it. This as­sign­ment is sim­i­lar to oth­ers that we have un­der­tak­en over the past 50 years for Ja­maica, St Kitts, Saint Lu­cia, and Grena­da, where the re­lat­ed sites have sim­i­lar kinds of eco-sys­tems as at To­co. How­ev­er, the crit­i­cisms there have been less in­tense. Since we have been op­er­at­ing in T&T from 1980 we have be­come fa­mil­iar with such zeal and ex­u­ber­ance.

In a healthy democ­ra­cy, de­bate is es­sen­tial and hence we wel­come re­spon­si­ble com­ments in the print me­dia about var­i­ous as­pects of the port pro­posed at To­co. How­ev­er, it is felt that some of the com­ments and ob­ser­va­tions may have been made through lack of in­for­ma­tion about the de­tails of modal­i­ties and stud­ies—en­vi­ron­men­tal, en­gi­neer­ing, and so­cio-eco­nom­ic—utilised in ar­riv­ing at the port de­sign pre­sent­ed at the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion of April 12, 2019.

We hence of­fer the fol­low­ing fur­ther ex­pla­na­tions.

RA­TIO­NALE AND DE­SIR­ABIL­I­TY FOR A PORT ON THE NORTH-EAST COAST OF TRINIDAD

1. At the out­set it needs to be stat­ed that nei­ther NID­CO nor its plan­ning, de­sign and EIA con­sul­tants will em­bark on such a ma­jor core in­fra­struc­ture project with­out due dili­gence and re­lat­ed pre­lim­i­nary and on­go­ing stud­ies on all as­pects of the port, in­clud­ing:

(i)) the most ap­pro­pri­ate lo­ca­tion for such a port on the north-east coast of Trinidad

(ii) the com­po­si­tion and tech­ni­cal de­sign there­of

(iii) the en­vi­ron­men­tal and the so­cio-eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty is­sues.

In ad­di­tion, it needs to be fur­ther recog­nised that this port is a port for T&T to be lo­cat­ed at To­co and hence a na­tion­al port and not a port for To­co on­ly.

2. The de­sir­abil­i­ty of a port be­tween Port-of-Spain and Ga­le­o­ta on the north and east coasts have been dis­cussed and stud­ied since the 1970s. Fur­ther, based on me­dia re­ports suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments seem to be in favour of such a port. Such con­tin­u­ing de­sir­abil­i­ty for this port em­anates from a uni­ver­sal premise that a sig­nif­i­cant core in­fra­struc­ture project like a port and as­so­ci­at­ed high­way, where none ex­ist, are a po­tent, fer­tile seed be­ing plant­ed. All with a very preg­nant promise of a healthy tree sprout­ing branch­es with fruits of sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic growth and op­por­tu­ni­ties. Whether the tree bears such fruits or not de­pends on sub­se­quent nur­tur­ing by the pri­vate sec­tor with en­cour­age­ment from suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments. In ad­di­tion, there are the added ben­e­fits these projects bring, ie, of rais­ing the liv­ing stan­dards of the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. These so­cio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits can­not be fi­nan­cial­ly quan­ti­fied in an unas­sail­able ob­jec­tive man­ner.

3. For such core projects, eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty analy­ses are al­most al­ways sub­jec­tive, de­pend­ing up­on the as­sump­tions made as to down­stream ben­e­fits and re­lat­ed quan­tifi­ca­tion of costs and re­turns. Suf­fice it to say that the Caribbean so­ci­eties and na­tion states sprout­ed from just such ports es­tab­lished up to 500 years ago. Hence for these in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, the macro-eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial—par­tic­u­lar­ly now that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my is crit­i­cal—should far out­weigh any sub­jec­tive mi­cro­eco­nom­ic com­pu­ta­tions.

4. Notwith­stand­ing these fun­da­men­tal pre-req­ui­sites in re­lat­ed de­ci­sion-mak­ing, a 1990 tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty study by the 'Sea-Bridge Team' for "The es­tab­lish­ment of a Mul­ti-Pur­pose port in the North-East Re­gion of Trinidad and a Fer­ry Link from the NE re­gion to To­ba­go" was car­ried out in 1990 by an em­i­nent, lo­cal team of con­sul­tants, com­pris­ing ar­chi­tects, en­gi­neers, econ­o­mists, and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists. The en­su­ing de­tailed re­port ex­am­ines in some de­tail a) Lo­ca­tion of port, b) Plan­ning pol­i­cy con­text of the NE Re­gion of Trinidad, c) Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of al­ter­na­tive port lo­ca­tions, d) The fer­ry ser­vice, e) Es­tab­lish­ing the scale of port fa­cil­i­ties, f) Pre­lim­i­nary en­gi­neer­ing de­sign, g) En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment h) Cost/ben­e­fit analy­sis i) Spin-off ben­e­fits, j) In­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work and k) So­cial sur­vey—To­co Vil­lage.

5. Em­a­nat­ing from these stud­ies and re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial analy­sis, the Sea Bridge Team Re­port rec­om­mends a port to be built at the east­ern end of To­co Bay, com­pris­ing, Fer­ry Berths, a Fish­eries Port (50 ves­sels), a Ma­ri­na (30 ves­sels) and Coast Guard berths. MOWT and NID­CO have been guid­ed by this re­port in es­tab­lish­ing the lo­ca­tion and the scale of this mul­ti-pur­pose port de­vel­op­ment.

6. It may be ar­gued that that study is 28 years old. We would con­tend that noth­ing has changed in To­co, but the needs iden­ti­fied in 1990 for eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties there are even more acute. More im­por­tant­ly, in T&T where di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my is now crit­i­cal, the north-east re­gion of Trinidad with its all too sought af­ter ver­dant, pic­turesque and pris­tine trop­i­cal coast­line and un­du­lat­ing hin­ter­land, cre­ates pos­si­bil­i­ties sim­i­lar to those in Ja­maica. In Ja­maica, a sim­i­lar­ly blessed north coast has be­come the eco­nom­ic back­bone of that coun­try. But to re­alise them core in­fra­struc­ture projects like ports and high­ways are es­sen­tial.

SITE SE­LEC­TION AND LO­CA­TION FOR A PORT ON THE NORTH-EAST COAST OF TRINIDAD

7. Be­sides the rec­om­men­da­tions of the fea­si­bil­i­ty study by the Sea-Bridge Team not­ed above, in 1988 the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) car­ried out an en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact study (EIS) for the lo­ca­tion of such a port on the north-east coast of Trinidad. Af­ter a rea­son­ably de­tailed study of sites at Grand Riv­iere, To­co Bay, and Ba­lan­dra Bay, it con­clud­ed, and we quote:

a. Grand Riv­iere Bay: 'A crit­i­cal habi­tat ex­ists in this bay in that the beach is con­sid­ered a sig­nif­i­cant nest­ing site on the north coast for leatherback tur­tles...' (Page 75 of the Re­port)

b. To­co Bay: 'To­co Bay can­not be said to pos­sess a crit­i­cal habi­tat...' (Page 78 of the Re­port)

c. Ba­lan­dra Bay: 'Ba­lan­dra Bay al­so does not pos­sess a crit­i­cal habi­tat...' (Page 81 etc of the Re­port)

8. Var­i­ous com­ments have been made about the pos­si­ble de­struc­tion of nest­ing places for the tur­tles at the cho­sen To­co Bay site. It was not­ed by IMA that in­ci­den­tal nest­ing has been re­port­ed in this bay—and al­so at Ba­lan­dra Bay. These nest­ing sites in To­co are at Mis­sion Beach, some 500 me­ters to the west of the pro­posed site for the To­co Port. Ac­cord­ing to the res­i­dent fish­er­folk, such vis­its by tur­tles to that site are very in­fre­quent. In any case, no con­struc­tion of any form as­so­ci­at­ed with this port is in­tend­ed to be with­in 500 me­ters of the Mis­sion Bay Beach, which would not be the case for Ba­lan­dra Bay Beach. All beach sites and bays on the north-east coast are prob­a­ble tur­tle nest­ing sites. It is the case of se­lect­ing the one least af­fect­ed, and that is the east­ern seaboard of To­co Bay, which has no beach­es that are suit­able for nest­ing.

9. Whilst a gen­er­alised com­ment on coral for­ma­tion in To­co Bay is made in the IMA re­port, sub­se­quent 2017 site-spe­cif­ic sur­vey un­der the foot­print of the fu­ture port, not­ed that 'where the light is able to reach the sea bot­tom there is suf­fi­cient hard bot­tom for coral at­tach­ment, how­ev­er, the wave ac­tion and sil­ta­tion pre­vent sig­nif­i­cant coral growth'. Hence the coral growth at the spe­cif­ic site is spo­radic and tran­sient. On­go­ing EIA stud­ies will elab­o­rate on this as­pect of the ma­rine ben­thos.

10. As to the is­sues of sed­i­men­ta­tion and ero­sion, To­co Bay was analysed by our spe­cial­ist sub-con­sul­tants us­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­spect­ed 'MIKE' suite of soft­ware and the re­sults in­di­cat­ed that there would be no sed­i­men­ta­tion or ero­sion prob­lems at the port site. In­stead, there will be an en­hanc­ing of the beach at Mis­sion Bay. Where­as at Ba­lan­dra Bay, sed­i­men­ta­tion would be a ma­jor prob­lem. Long­shore sed­i­ment trans­port from Orinoco Riv­er along the east­ern seaboard of Trinidad, could cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant sed­i­men­ta­tion with­in a prob­a­ble har­bour at Ba­lan­dra Bay.

About Arun Buch & As­so­ciates

Arun Buch & As­so­ciates Ltd (ABA) is a whol­ly owned con­sult­ing en­gi­neer­ing firm, found­ed in Trinidad in 2002. Be­fore 2002, it was known as HLC Eng Co. Both firms whilst based in Trinidad, al­so op­er­at­ed through­out the Caribbean, from Be­lize to Trinidad. Mr Arun Buch is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and the prin­ci­pal part­ner of both firms. In Trinidad, the firm de­signed projects such as the Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in POS, Govt Cam­pus Plaza, Ato Bold­en and Man­ny Ramjohn sta­di­ums, Chancery Lane Com­plex (San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal), Hilton To­ba­go (Grand Mag­dale­na) and many oth­ers. Mr Buch was al­so an ex­pert wit­ness at the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry where he sub­mit­ted re­ports to the Com­mis­sion and to UDE­COTT on 'What went wrong' with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um.

The firm was ap­point­ed in 2017 by NID­CO to car­ry out con­cep­tu­al plan­ning and pre­lim­i­nary en­gi­neer­ing de­signs for the To­co Port. Dur­ing 50 years of prac­tice in the Caribbean, Mr Buch has al­so de­signed oth­er ma­jor port projects in Ja­maica, St Kitts, Saint Lu­cia, and Grena­da plus many sig­nif­i­cant build­ings and bridges in those coun­tries.

Con­tin­u­ing in your T&T Guardian to­mor­row