An ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view has been filed by En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and pres­i­dent of the T&T Farm­ers Union Shi­raz Khan seek­ing to re­verse a de­ci­sion by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Au­thor­i­ty to grant clear­ance for the con­struc­tion of hous­es on the fer­tile St Au­gus­tine Nurs­eries.

The mat­ter was filed be­fore Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed at the San Fer­nan­do High Court yes­ter­day. Kublals­ingh and Khan were giv­en three weeks to come up with sub­mis­sions to sup­port their case.

The ap­pli­ca­tion seeks to quash the EMA’s Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) grant­ed to the T&T Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) on Sep­tem­ber 14 last year to con­struct a dozen eight storey high rise build­ings.

The build­ings com­prise of 504 units of mul­ti-fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial hous­ing and are ex­pect­ed to be built on 7.083 hectares of land off the cor­ner of Farm Road and South­ern Main Road, Val­sayn.

Kublals­ingh and pres­i­dent of the T&T Farm­ers Union, Shi­raz Khan are con­tend­ing that the EMA failed in its manda­to­ry du­ties pre­scribed by the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 36 (1) of the EMA Act, to con­sid­er all rel­e­vant mat­ters. The ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion seeks to en­sure that the EMA con­ducts an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment on the project to as­sess the risks.

Speak­ing to the me­dia out­side the court, Kublals­ingh said the hous­ing project was card­ed to be con­struct­ed on the ex­ist­ing nurs­ery and not near the nurs­ery.

“The HDC wants to put out of ex­is­tence 17 acres of grade 1 agri­cul­tur­al soil and neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the hor­ti­cul­tur­al, en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic func­tions. We have filed an ac­tion for ju­di­cial re­view ask­ing the court to re­verse the de­ci­sion of the EMA to grant the CEC.

“We oth­er hear­ings in Feb­ru­ary when the court will hear the ap­pli­ca­tion for leave,” Kublals­ingh said.

He not­ed that there were no at­tor­neys on board with the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion.

“I my­self had as­sem­bled a team of lawyers but that did not work out so I had to do most of the doc­u­men­ta­tion and sub­mis­sion my­self with the as­sis­tance of my sis­ter who did some of the fil­ings,” Kublals­ingh said.

Khan, who al­so ad­dressed the me­dia, said he was trained at the nurs­ery site 35 years ago.

“Out of 156 acres they re­moved the Api­aries Di­vi­sion to build hous­es and now they want to do the same thing. This strug­gle is not po­lit­i­cal. It is about pro­tect­ing our peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment,” Khan said.

He added that over the years the Nurs­ery was starved of re­sources. “There was no trac­tor on that site for two years, they starved that site and now they say­ing it is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to keep the nurs­ery,” Khan said.

MP for St Au­gus­tine Prakash Ra­mad­har, who was al­so present, said the nurs­ery was valu­able and was an im­por­tant hor­ti­cul­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal as­set.

While hous­ing is im­por­tant, Ra­mad­har said, there were oth­er parcels of land which were more ac­ces­si­ble and bet­ter suit­ed for hous­ing. He not­ed that the germplasm and fer­tile Grade 1 soil were ex­treme­ly valu­able to farm­ers as the nurs­ery pro­vides ad­e­quate plant stock and ge­net­ic va­ri­eties for T&T’s farm­ers.

Once leave is grant­ed, the mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to pro­ceed in the High Court. —RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA