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 of­fer fur­ther ex­pla­na­tions con­tin­u­ing from an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian:

11. Com­ments by some in­fer that Ba­lan­dra Bay was rec­om­mend­ed by IMA as a pre­ferred port site, which is not the case. In terms of the im­pact on ma­rine ben­thos by the port, IMA as not­ed at ‘7’ did not ex­press any pref­er­ence be­tween To­co and Ba­lan­dra. It clear­ly states that both sites are de­void of ‘crit­i­cal habi­tat’. Yet re­cent ar­ti­cles in the press tend to op­pose that in­formed opin­ion.

12. Hence port plan­ning, en­gi­neer­ing, and so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tion by ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als in re­lat­ed fields should dic­tate the fi­nal choice be­tween the two. Re­lat­ed opin­ion has been un­equiv­o­cal­ly ex­pressed by IMA’s 1988 study, it states.

“How­ev­er, this bay (To­co) does not pos­sess a crit­i­cal habi­tat and there­fore the so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors be­ing con­sid­ered for de­vel­op­ing port and har­bour fa­cil­i­ties at this bay should out­weigh the dis­ad­van­tages of de­stroy­ing its nat­ur­al ecosys­tems.” (Page 90)

As to this crit­i­cal so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­te­ria, To­co should out­weigh Ba­lan­dra, since,

(i) It is cen­tral to the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty zone of scenic coastal de­vel­op­ment be­tween Matelot and the east­ern­most Galera Point.

(ii) It has by far the largest con­cen­tra­tion of pop­u­la­tion in the area, and thus ben­e­fit most from such a port plus a high­way de­vel­op­ment.

(iii) It has a rel­a­tive­ly more de­vel­oped civic and in­fra­struc­tur­al fa­cil­i­ties—schools, health, etcetera.

13. The seabridge study team us­ing a points rat­ing sys­tem al­so se­lect­ed To­co Bay as the pre­ferred site. Ba­lan­dra is out­side that op­por­tu­ni­ty zone and to the south of east­ern­most Galera Point. Al­so, for the fer­ry link, Ba­lan­dra is fur­ther from Scar­bor­ough than To­co and is out­side the nor­mal route from Trinidad to To­ba­go, and hence can­not eas­i­ly be an in-be­tween stop.

14. It is un­for­tu­nate that a re­cent ar­ti­cle in lo­cal me­dia refers to the 1990 seabridge fea­si­bil­i­ty study as be­ing pri­vate­ly fund­ed and hence pre­sum­ably taint­ed. Sim­i­lar con­no­ta­tions are in­ferred up­on the 2000 study. The 1990 study was com­mis­sioned and fund­ed by ‘The Trinidad and To­ba­go In­dus­tri­al Cor­po­ra­tion’, a gov­ern­ment of T&T en­ti­ty and con­sist­ed of ex­perts, all lo­cal, in re­lat­ed fields. Hence no bet­ter in­formed and ob­jec­tive study could have been car­ried out as to the se­lec­tion of a site for a port for north­east Trinidad.

CON­CEP­TU­AL DE­SIGN, PRE­LIM­I­NARY
ENG AND EN­VI­RON­MEN­TAL STUD­IES
OF THE MUL­TI-PUR­POSE PORT

15. The de­sign con­sul­tant to­geth­er with MOWT and NID­CO, af­ter study­ing the IMA re­port, the seabridge fea­si­bil­i­ty study, and in­de­pen­dent­ly al­so con­clud­ed that the To­co Bay east side should be the cho­sen lo­ca­tion for the mul­ti-pur­pose port for north-east Trinidad, and al­so the ter­mi­na­tion point for the high­way from Va­len­cia.

16. In defin­ing the scope of ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed by the de­sign con­sul­tant, NID­CO spec­i­fied the need for a req­ui­site amount of eco­log­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies to be un­der­tak­en, which should in­form and guide the de­sign process. We re­cruit­ed the ser­vices of re­spect­ed en­ti­ties with ex­ten­sive lo­cal and Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence in these fields to car­ry out these stud­ies, which formed key in­puts in the de­sign process and the evo­lu­tion of the port de­sign as pre­sent­ed at the To­co pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on April 12, 2019, (see at­tached im­age). On­go­ing de­tailed EIA stud­ies will elab­o­rate up­on these is­sues.

17. His­tor­i­cal­ly ports in the East­ern Caribbean have been lo­cat­ed on the lee­ward side of the is­lands and in most cas­es in nat­ur­al har­bours. This is not the case for the north­east coast of Trinidad where there are no nat­ur­al har­bours and is ex­posed, hence will re­quire sig­nif­i­cant pro­tec­tion from ex­treme wave con­di­tions gen­er­at­ed by hur­ri­canes. To­co or Grand Riv­iere or Ba­lan­dra will re­quire vary­ing lengths of ma­jor break­wa­ters to with­stand forces from and pro­tect the har­bour(s) from six-sev­en me­tre high waves. This was cen­tral to the plan­ning of the port at To­co, where the break­wa­ter is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 450 me­ters long on the north face and of sim­i­lar length on the north­west face.

18. We sub­mit­ted our con­cep­tu­al de­sign and pre­lim­i­nary en­gi­neer­ing re­port in No­vem­ber 2017. The rec­om­mend­ed mul­ti-pur­pose port lay­out at the To­co Bay was amongst oth­er things, dic­tat­ed by,

(i) Site se­lec­tion be­tween con­tend­ing sites to be based on max­i­mum so­cio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

(ii) Spec­i­fied fa­cil­i­ties to be pro­vid­ed for. In this con­text, see al­so ob­ser­va­tions at ‘21’ be­low

(iii) The ab­sence of crit­i­cal ma­rine habi­tat un­der the foot­print.

(iv) A site with a sig­nif­i­cant lack of sed­i­men­ta­tion and ero­sion.

(v) A re­quire­ment for a sig­nif­i­cant break­wa­ter to pro­tect the har­bour struc­tures from ma­jor dam­age, like­ly to re­sult

from prob­a­ble six-sev­en me­tre high hur­ri­cane gen­er­at­ed

ex­treme wave con­di­tions with a re­turn pe­ri­od of 100

years, em­a­nat­ing from an arc NW to NE.

(vi) The break­wa­ter should al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­grade and dif­fract the nor­mal heavy wave con­di­tions, 2.0-2.5 me­tre high, and thus cre­ate a wave regime with­in the har­bour that meets the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed max­i­mum wave heights for dif­fer­ent kinds of ves­sels moored with­in. All as pre­scribed by PI­ANC, British and US Stan­dards.

(vii) A 15m wide sea-lev­el chan­nel shall sep­a­rate the en­tire port from the shore­line.

(vi­ii) In spite of the all too ap­par­ent rocky and hard stra­ta seabed, deep­en­ing of the har­bour us­ing dy­na­mite blast­ing is to be avoid­ed. Thus the har­bour lay­out needs to be sit­ed in req­ui­site depths, which in turn pro­vides ar­eas in shal­low­er wa­ters where recla­ma­tion for land­side fa­cil­i­ties, us­ing hy­draulic dredge fill/bor­row can be un­der­tak­en.

(ix) The To­co Bay shore­line and re­lat­ed hin­ter­land shall not be al­tered to cre­ate land­side fa­cil­i­ties, and thus neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the ex­ist­ing pic­turesque and tran­quil am­biance. As not­ed, all land­side fa­cil­i­ties will be sit­ed on re­claimed lands. Even for con­struc­tion, con­trac­tors’ stor­age, con­cret­ing and pre-cast­ing and oth­er site fa­cil­i­ties are

• to be lo­cat­ed on lands to be re­claimed and not on ex­ist­ing lands. Thus no land ac­qui­si­tion is re­quired and hence planned for.

(x) The buried ca­bles in the seabed, sup­ply­ing HV elec­tri­cal pow­er to To­ba­go shall not be im­ped­ed.

(xi) Land recla­ma­tion us­ing land­fill is to be avoid­ed. This will avoid all ex­ces­sive heavy traf­fic and thus al­so avoid dam­age to the ex­ist­ing frag­ile, nar­row and wind­ing roads.

(xii) All fill ma­te­r­i­al to be barged (rock ar­mour­ing) and dredged hy­draulic fill from a dredged area up to 1000 m from the pro­posed recla­ma­tion for the port.

19. In ad­di­tion, the port in­clud­ing the break­wa­ter has been planned and de­signed to cri­te­ria es­tab­lished in re­spect­ed In­ter­na­tion­al De­sign Codes, Stan­dards and Rec­om­men­da­tions for ports, such as British Stan­dard 6349 and PI­ANC rec­om­men­da­tions. Sim­i­lar US and Japan­ese pub­li­ca­tions were al­so con­sult­ed. BS 6349 clear­ly re­quires the de­sign­er to study, and cater for phys­i­cal oceano­graph­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors such as a) Wind, b) Waves—ex­treme and op­er­a­tional, c) Cur­rents, d) Sed­i­men­ta­tion and ero­sion, e) Tidal vari­a­tions, f) Storm surges, g) Cli­mat­ic sea lev­el change, h) Wa­ter qual­i­ty changes and oth­ers. In ad­di­tion, a scop­ing as­sess­ment of the im­pact on ma­rine and ter­res­tri­al ecol­o­gy is al­so re­quired, which were al­so car­ried out.

20. Cer­tain neg­a­tive com­ments as to the size of the port have been pub­lished. Even with­out the rec­om­men­da­tions of a mul­ti-pur­pose port in the 1990 fea­si­bil­i­ty study, the ex­posed north-east coast of Trinidad, ne­ces­si­tates a ma­jor break­wa­ter of ad­e­quate size and length to pro­vide the req­ui­site pro­tec­tion not­ed at ‘17’ and ‘18’ shown in im­age, This in turn cre­ates ad­di­tion­al har­bour acreages in shal­low­er wa­ters, where small­er boats, yachts 15-25m long in a ma­ri­na and fish­ing ves­sels ten-15 m long can be safe­ly moored with min­i­mal ad­di­tion­al costs. In ad­di­tion, the lee­ward side of the 450 me­tre long north­west leg of the break­wa­ter will serve as the like­ly berths for the ser­vic­ing of en­er­gy sec­tor work­boats. 50-100 m long, with an at­tached plat­form struc­ture of rel­a­tive­ly low­er cost giv­en the pro­tec­tion of­fered by the break­wa­ter.

21. These ‘by-prod­uct’ fa­cil­i­ties will al­so cre­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue streams to pay for the in­vest­ment in this core in­fra­struc­ture project.

EMA, CEC, AND THE TOR
FOR THE ON­GO­ING EIA

22. An ap­pli­ca­tion for a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) to EMA was made in ear­ly 2018. Most of the rest of 2018 was spent in a con­struc­tive di­a­logue with EMA as to the need and ex­tent of fur­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment (EIA) stud­ies, as com­pared to those al­ready con­duct­ed by IMA (1988), the Seabridge Study Team (1990) and at the Con­cep­tu­al and Pre­lim­i­nary En­gi­neer­ing De­sign Stage in 2017. It was felt that the na­ture and ex­tent of crit­i­cisms that would ac­com­pa­ny the an­nounce­ment of build­ing such a port, EMA had to re­sort to a full all-en­com­pass­ing EIA study to be un­der­tak­en, which was hence spec­i­fied by EMA in its TOR for the EIA study.

23. Sim­i­lar­ly, in recog­ni­tion of the in­ten­si­ty of such crit­i­cisms, NID­CO sought to en­gage an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly well-re­spect­ed EIA firm to car­ry out such stud­ies. Hence ERM was en­gaged af­ter con­sid­er­able di­a­logue on the scope of ser­vices. ERM op­er­ates out of 40 sep­a­rate coun­tries in the world and have pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out such stud­ies for en­er­gy com­pa­nies in Trinidad and is now in­volved in Guyana. Hence it is not a stranger to the EIA is­sues of the Caribbean. To avoid co­or­di­na­tion prob­lems be­tween the de­sign­er, in­clud­ing the de­sign of the port pre­sent­ed plus pre­vi­ous EIA stud­ies, with the work of ERM, the de­sign con­sul­tant Arun Buch and As­so­ciates Ltd will con­tin­ue to li­aise and work with ERM.

CON­SUL­TA­TION, COM­MENTS
IN ME­DIA, AND OB­JEC­TIV­I­TY:

24. It has been im­plied in the press and on April 12 that con­sul­ta­tions with the stake­hold­ers have not been un­der­tak­en be­fore. Con­sul­ta­tions at var­i­ous lev­els in Trinidad would have been un­der­tak­en in the 1970s, 1988 (IMA), 1990 (Seabridge Team), and in 2017, al­beit amongst in­formed and con­cerned groups and elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple. Oth­ers would have been aware of this project and may have made rep­re­sen­ta­tions through their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives and sim­i­lar bod­ies.

25. Since plan­ning and de­sign of a na­tion­al port, in an ex­posed and eco-sen­si­tive lo­ca­tion like north­east Trinidad, is a high­ly tech­ni­cal ex­er­cise and is sub­ject to cri­te­ria es­tab­lished in In­ter­na­tion­al Codes and Stan­dards, the re­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion can­not be read­i­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the gen­er­al pub­lic through the lo­cal press. But now that the Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished a clear path to­wards im­ple­ment­ing this core in­fra­struc­ture project and hence

26. It would have been prefer­able for me­dia hous­es pub­lish­ing such ar­ti­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly from its recog­nised jour­nal­ists or cor­re­spon­dents, to ap­proach the de­vel­op­ers of the port—NID­CO—on re­spons­es be­fore it goes on­to to pub­lish lengthy crit­i­cisms like the ones that ap­peared re­cent­ly in ‘Ex­press’ in four parts.

27. In do­ing so, it would ac­cept the premise that the To­co port con­sti­tutes a ma­jor thrust to­wards the much de­sired by all, in­clud­ing the me­dia, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my. This, in turn, would avoid skep­ti­cism in the gen­er­al pub­lic to­wards this thrust. Sim­i­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists with the pub­lic of Trinidad, which is lit­er­ate and ar­tic­u­late.