WESTERN BUREAU: Two meetings on Wednesday with Horace Dalley, the environment minister, and the Whitehouse Fishermen Co-operative, failed to resolve a dispute between the government and the fishermen, who claimed that their income has been cut since the development of the upscale Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montego Bay.

However, both parties agreed that the meetings were encouraging and were confident that the matter could be resolved soon.

“The meeting was not a waste of time. It was the first time that the fishermen were sitting with a minister and a technical team which includes representatives from the fisheries department, the ministry of tourism, the National Resources Conservation Authority and the National Environmental Planning Authority to discuss the matter,” Dalley told the Observer following the first meeting.

“We are very satisfied with the outcome of the meetings and how the issues were dealt with by the minister. We believe that some progress was made,” president of the Whitehouse Fishermen Co-operative, Troy Jump, told the Observer yesterday.

The environment minister was last month mandated by Prime Minister P J Patterson to resolve the three year-old concerns of the more than 100 Whitehouse fishermen.

The fishermen have been complaining that they have been losing millions of dollars in revenue and equipment as a result of the Rose Hall development.

They charged that following the development of the hotel in 1999 there was a run-off of mud and marl into the sea, which destroyed their traps.

Since then, they claim that they have been forced to set their traps far west as Sandy Bay to avoid the growth of some king of algae spreading across from the Ritz Carlton to the Cari-Blue Hotel.

Now, they say that they want to be compensated to the tune of $10 million and the relevant authorities to remove the algae.

The details of the discussions between the minister and the fishermen were not available, but at the end of the first meeting with the fishermen Dalley said the issue of compensation was not discussed. He said after that first meeting before meeting with the executive of the fishermen’s co-op that the Government was not accepting liability for the loss of revenue and damage done to the fishermen’s traps.

The director of conservation and protection division of NEPA, Learie Miller said Wednesday that there was an activity taking place in the area where the fishermen operate that is giving gave rapid grown of the algae.

“We have not being able to establish which property or who is the cause of that, but we know that for the algae to grow so rapidly it has to be fed by nutrients going to it,” Miller said.