Bakers Bay

A smooth-billed ani sunning at the Great Guana Cay settlement.

For a year, Ingraham railed against the anchor project policy. He talked about sustainable development. He slipped Great Guana Cay into his campaign speeches.

At the same time, a blog became popular in the urban parts of the Bahamas. It was run by five mysterious men who appeared to have connections throughout the Bahamian political, judiciary and business establishment. They called themselves the Bloggy Boys. In the age before the internet, they would have been called yellow journalists. Today, we know their type as vicious, humorous citizen journalists. With photoshop cartoons and fiery language, the Bloggy Boys built a case against the Christie Administration. Their poster-child for corruption was the Great Guana Cay controversy.

Great Guana Cay was receiving so much attention in the Bahamas, that political criticism of their movement began. Bahamians criticized Save Guana Cay Reef for not doing enough about the environmental issues in the Southern Bahamas. They were criticized for not tackling cultural issues in Nassau. All of this, of course, is absurd. Save Guana Cay Reef was a community soup drive, and they were being expected to solve the Nation's problems.

Again, the locals of Great Guana Cay were shocked. They were in the Abacos, their legal team was in Freeport. But now, a third group from urban Nassau was trumpeting their cause to the common Bahamian.

The Bloggy Boys, and the Guana Cay issue as a symbol against the anchor development policy, helped propel Hubert Ingraham to victory and back into power.

In his first weeks as Prime Minister, Ingraham announced that the age of the anchor developments was over. He laid out ideas for sustainable development. Guana Cay, and the other islands who made their voices heard, had impacted the Bahamas - changed its very course.

For months, Guana locals wondered when Ingraham would talk about their island, the island that started all this in the first place. A few months ago, people at Guana Cay found out that Ingraham was going to hold a secret meeting with the Bakers Bay Club on their property.
That didn't sound right, they thought. Why isn't he meeting with us too like he did as a candidate?

They determined that they should invite him to the settlement to talk with them as well.

But the Prime Minister declined.

He held his meeting with the developers, and then held a press conference. It was at this press conference that he called the islanders terrorists.

Now, I know what he meant when he told me on the phone that it's been taken care of.

A few weeks after the meeting with the developers, the appeals court made their decision - it was unanimous - all appeals judges agreed to dismiss the case against the government of the Bahamas and the Discovery Land Company.

Later, I would learn that Discovery Land Company is the only remaining anchor development project that can pay for completion of its project. To let justice remove Discovery Land Company from the Bahamas - the only viable anchor development from Prime Minister Christie's anchor party - would be to fail as Prime Minister.

We motor past the Joe's Creek area, and we can see the main entrance to the marina. There are several construction cranes. Smoke rises from the interior of the property. Discovery Land Company has removed most of the island's remaining mangroves and literally cut the island in two. Scheduled for the end of 2008 is the opening of the first piece of Bakers Bay Golf & Ocean Club - a 180 slip marina, with deepwater amenities for private yachts up to 300 feet in length.

For the past three years, opponents of the Bakers Bay Club have been criticizing the company's poor use of silt curtains. When the Disney Channel was dredged, incredible amounts of silt was uplifted from the sea bottom, killing turtle grass and small coral communities. The dredging project was so large that the dumped sand created an island in Bakers Bay. Critics of Bakers Bay wanted to be assured that silt curtains would always be in place. Silt curtains are floating barriers with curtains that extend to the bottom of the sea. The idea is to contain the silt within the marine construction zone.

Back in the late 1980's, when the deepwater Disney channel was being dredged, silt curtains were simply never used in countries like the Bahamas. Scientists and conservationists were aware of the problems construction silt caused to fragile marine ecosystems, but there was no relationship between business and the environment.

The locals tried to fight the deepwater dredging. They went out in Zodiacs, like Greenpeace, to try to stop the dredging. They quickly failed. In another instance, well-meaning locals snorkeled up to Disney's brutal dolphin pen at night - a silty shallow-water place, despicable by any standard - and snipped an opening in the cage. The dolphins, raised by humans, swam to Marsh Harbour overnight and were quickly snatched back.

As we move into this area, however, we see a thick cloud of silt, extending a quarter mile out into Bakers Bay. As bad as the Disney dredge job.

We see the huge entrance to the marina, and see that the silt curtains are laying, unused, on the marina's shore. Oops.

But then, Jenkins says, "silt curtain?"

He stares out at the marina, his hand on the wheel and says, "They've never used silt curtains. Those are just oil booms."

Giant construction barges float only meters from coral structures on the northeastern end of Guana Cay.

Oil booms, which might contain oil in an oil spill, are useful at the site of the Exxon Valdez. But if Discovery Land Company is using oil booms in place of silt curtains, we've just discovered they are disregarding one of the very most basic premises of their own environmental impact assessment.

We float there for a few minutes. I am trying to gather my thoughts. Oil booms? This couldn't be possible. I glance at the handful in the boat as they look out at their island's transformation. I wonder when I would have given up? I wonder when I would have thrown in the towel.  

In the face of such odds, I wonder how these people have stayed together. Tropical mega-developers, after all, always win, because in the end, the community opposition falls apart.

As the boat floats across the main marina entrance, we can see it in its entirety - one of the most massive marinas ever constructed in the West Indies, on one of its smallest islets. It is in this marina that lies the premise for the destruction of the coral reef. Create genuine sustainable development laws in these small nations, and you save one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Let marinas like this be built at the edge of a coral reef, let a part of Earth's biological history vanish forever.