Gail Alexan­der

The Town and Coun­try Di­vi­sion had re­fused per­mis­sion for a hous­ing de­vel­op­ment to be built in Green­vale in 2000 and 2009 be­cause the di­vi­sion had not­ed—among oth­er rea­sons— the site falls in the Ca­roni Riv­er flood plain sub­ject to flood­ing, where "no de­vel­op­ment could be con­sid­ered."

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Franklin Khan con­firmed this in the Sen­ate re­spond­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark's query if the Plan­ning Min­istry's T&C Di­vi­sion had at any time re­fused plan­ning per­mis­sion for the de­vel­op­ment of a hous­ing com­mu­ni­ty in the area.

But de­spite the two re­fusals, the de­vel­op­ment of Green­vale be­gan just pri­or to 2009 and con­tin­ued full speed post-2010, Khan al­so con­firmed — span­ning both the PNM and PP ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Khan said, "Search­es of the records of the T&C Plan­ning Di­vi­sion have re­vealed that plan­ning per­mis­sion for the de­vel­op­ment of a hous­ing com­mu­ni­ty in the area now known as the Green­vale Hous­ing de­vel­op­ment was re­fused on two oc­ca­sions—-2000 and 2009."

Per­mis­sion was re­fused on May 31, 2000, for de­vel­op­ment, chang­ing use of the land from agri­cul­tur­al home­stead use to res­i­den­tial use.

"Rea­sons were that the site fell in­to an area which un­der plan­ning pol­i­cy, was al­lo­cat­ed for agri­cul­ture. It fell with­in the Ca­roni riv­er flood plain and was sub­ject to flood­ing and the draft East-West cor­ri­dor Land Use Strat­e­gy Plan iden­ti­fied the site for land­scape/riv­er cor­ro­sion pur­pos­es - open space,"

Fi­nal plan­ning per­mis­sion was al­so re­fused on June 26, 2009, re­gard­ing the erec­tion of build­ings for sin­gle fam­i­ly and mul­ti-fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial pur­pos­es; res­i­den­tial/com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.

Khan added, "Rea­sons were that the site fell with­in an area which un­der present plan­ning pol­i­cy, was al­lo­cat­ed for con­ser­va­tion pur­pos­es. It fell with­in the Ca­roni Riv­er flood plain where no de­vel­op­ment could be con­sid­ered and the site formed part of a larg­er par­cel of land which didn't have the ben­e­fit of ap­proval for sub­di­vi­sion as re­quired un­der Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act (Chp 35:01)."

Khan said sub­se­quent to re­ceiv­ing cor­re­spon­dence from the T&C, the Work Min­istry's Drainage di­rec­tor ad­vised T&C by let­ter of No­vem­ber 18, 2011, that since the de­vel­op­ment of the site was "well ad­vanced", Works con­sid­ered and ac­cept­ed in prin­ci­ple the drainage pro­pos­als for Phas­es 1 - 111 sub­mit­ted by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

HDC sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion on April 9, 2013, seek­ing fi­nal plan­ning per­mis­sion for the sub­di­vi­sion of 73,000 hectares of land, by the ex­ci­sion of 41,000 hectares for com­pre­hen­sive res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment. Khan said the ap­pli­ca­tion was sub­se­quent­ly with­drawn by the ap­pli­cant.

But by let­ter of May 28, 2014, HDC sub­mit­ted re­vised plans for the sub­di­vi­sion of land to cre­ate lots for res­i­den­tial/an­cil­lary pur­pos­es. T&C sent cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed June 18, 2014, in­di­cat­ing plans were re­viewed and found to be ac­cept­able and they could have been used as the ba­sis for prepa­ra­tion of fi­nal plans to ob­tain plan­ning per­mis­sion.

By that time the de­vel­op­ment of the site was sub­stan­tial­ly com­plet­ed, Khan not­ed. Fol­low­ing new HDC ap­pli­ca­tion, fi­nal plan­ning per­mis­sion was grant­ed in Oc­to­ber 2014 and ap­pli­ca­tions sent by HDC to re­tain ex­ist­ing res­i­den­tial build­ings on site, were ap­proved in 2015 and 2016