ENVIRONMENT Minister Dean Peart has ordered that work on the development of the contentious $50-million cemetery at Burnt Ground in Hanover cease, pending the result of an environment impact assessment (EIA) for which disgruntled residents have lobbied over several months.

“Burnt ground was established without them doing an EIA.

The residents found out and have been agitating and creating hell about it. We had a long discussion and got the opinion of the attorney-general and we have taken steps now to do a proper EIA,” Peart said Wednesday.

“It is not something that we can take a chance with. We have people getting drinking water from nearby. We want to make sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is safe. Arrogance is not going to help us now,” he added.

The minister’s decision follows recent findings by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA)/Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA), which had earlier given their stamp of approval to the project.

The findings suggest that the underground water resources at Burnt Ground could be threatened by the development, which includes the construction of a chapel and parking spaces.

Developers of the cemetery and burial ground, the Delapenha Funeral Home, have refused to comment on the issue.

“I was instructed by my legal team not to make any comment to the media,” Dale Delapenha, the managing director of Delapenha Funeral Home, told the Sunday Observer on Thursday.

The minister’s decision, meanwhile, could be seen as an early victory for the 2,000 residents of the community who have been opposed to the project since it got underway around mid last year. Residents have, since then, taken to the streets several times in protest against the project, which, they say, could threaten their quality of life. Insisting all the while that the cemetery’s completion risked the

contamination of their water supply, they have repeatedly demanded that government stop the project and conduct an EIA to determine if the threat was real.

Now, a year later, NEPA, acting on the recommendations of its board, and the NRCA are looking to facilitate that EIA.

“We are going to be following the recommendations made by the board on how to deal with it,” said Zadie Neufville, the acting communications manager for NEPA. “We are working through the process, which will see us determining how we select the persons who are to do it, who pays for it, etc.”

There is, however, no clear indication of when the agency is to arrive at those decisions. Neufville said it would take time.

“We have to come up with a process people can see through… terms of reference acceptable to all concerned.

What we are doing is working through it. We have had meetings to have all our options down,” she said, noting that once consensus was reached the actual EIA would take time.

Head of the Hanover Parish Council, Councillor Lester Crooks (JLP – Riverside division) has, in the interim, welcomed news of the minister’s decision. If residents had a concern, he said it was only reasonable that they should be addressed.

“They (the agencies) have to do what they have to do and do it properly,” he said. “Let’s say it (the granting of the permit) wasn’t done properly or not satisfactory to the people, I think that the proper way to go is to go about it properly. You have to do what is right.”

– williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com