Grenada is at grave risk of losing one of its most iconic natural attractions, soon to be sacrificed upon the altar of CBI
As we all know, a massive hotel and golf course development is currently under construction at Levera in the Northern tip of Grenada, funded by our Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme.
Typically, and according to Grenadian law, before any construction can begin, the developer has to submit an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) study, for approval by the Planning and Development Authority (PDA).
Repeat: before the first shovel hits the ground. But in Grenada we don’t do things like that. Putting the cart squarely before the horse, PDA allowed construction of the golf course – one of the biggest potential negative environmental impacts of the overall project – to proceed without an ESIA, and it was only after a successful legal challenge from the Grenada Land Actors (GLA), that PDA then ordered an ESIA be conducted on the more-than-half completed golf course.
In all my years of working with the World Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, and in project finance consulting, I’ve never come across an ESIA process like this one: it’s ludicrous. You cannot do an EIA on a project that is already more than half-built.
The ESIA is meant to inform the design of the asset being built, so that you can correct mistakes at the planning stage, before you start construction. In this case, the construction of the golf course is almost completed, and now the Consultants are trying to do an environmental impact assessment, when it is already too late.
To use a double-analogy: the Consultants have been given a basket to carry water, so naturally their report leaks like a sieve. The negative impacts of building an 18-hole irrigated golf course at the very northern tip of Grenada are huge, and glaring.
As the following recent pictures show, these are not potential impacts, they are real:
The biggest challenge for the developers, and the biggest impact for Grenadians, is water. Lots of it: a 500-room luxury resort and 180-acre irrigated golf course are thirsty beasts, you don’t have to be a hydrologist to know what every Grenadian knows: Levera is dry as a bone!
NAWASA made it plain at the very outset: don’t look to us for any water! Same response from GRENLEC, but we’ll get to that later. So if not NAWASA, where’s all that water going to come from?
No problem, say the developers: we’ll bring water from Sauteurs! Specifically, they plan to build an abstraction and pumping station at the estuary of the La Fortune River, and a pipeline from there to the project site, a distance of 2.5 kilometres, as shown below:
The proposed pipeline route is shown in yellow. Due to the poor resolution picture provided by the Consultants (“That’s all we have”), it’s difficult to make out the details, but certain salient features are abundantly clear.
Firstly: the pipeline goes all the way along the coastline, before being pumped to a point above the project site, where the water can be gravity-fed to the resort and golf course below. Now, this is where things become intriguing. Hidden amongst all that fine print in Fig 2.5, is a bombshell.
Expanding the image to its maximum, we can make out the following innocent-sounding statement: “Additionally, a 6,500 cubic meter reservoir is built on the mountaintop.” What mountaintop? What other mountaintop is there: Welcome Stone!
Yes folks, if the developers, Singapore Heng Sheng (Grenada) Development PTE Ltd, get their way, this is what will become of our beautiful, beloved, some would say sacred Welcome Stone:
Now, at this point, I hear many of you asking: What is this Welcome Stone he’s crying about? True, it isn’t one of Grenada’s most popular attractions, which makes it all the more precious. Not easily accessible, you have to really want to get there, but when do, after a short hike, it’s well worth the effort.
Located on a high ridge overlooking the northern tip of Grenada with breathtaking views of Levera Lake, Sandy and Sugar Loaf Islands, and the Grenadines shimmering in the distance.
As raved about by no less than ‘Pure Grenada’ – paradoxically the same Government that now seeks to allow the complete destruction of this sacred site, for the benefit of the gamblers and golfers below.
THIS IS A TRAVESTY AND MUST BE STOPPED!
As if this isn’t bad enough, there are other aspects of the developer’s master plan for infrastructure that are equally absurd:
Abstracting water from the La Fortune River is no small matter, the developer cannot simply say: “The river has X cubic metres flow, therefore we’ll take 30%”. It would require its own ESIA and hydrological study and be approved by the Water Resources Management Unit (WRMU). However, the Act was only passed in 2025 and the WRMU is not yet operational.
Building a 2.5-kilometre pipeline running along the coastline would also require its own ESIA and approvals, and is fraught with challenges regarding land acquisition.
Acquiring land for the pipeline route is fraught with challenges. For every parcel, the developer would need some combination of: easement, lease, and/or purchase. This could take years to complete.
Also hidden within the fine print is the ‘small’ matter of a desalination plant, previously unmentioned. We don’t know where it is, how big it is, and what are the likely environmental impacts: nothing. Like all the other gaps in their master plan, this too would require its own ESIA.
And now: electricity. Where’s the power going to come from, to feed that 500-room monstrosity? Again, no problem says the developer: the sun! They plan to build a 30 Megawatt photovoltaic solar farm, with a battery electricity storage system (BESS) attached. What??? This would be a HUGE infrastructure project in its own right, requiring at least about 220 acres of land – where’s that coming from? And yet again, a separate ESIA would be required.
Now, after this long list of glaring deficiencies in the developer’s so-called infrastructure plan, you’d think the consultants would sound some serious alarm bells – wouldn’t you ring them long and loud? Not a bit of it, everything is hunky-dory, just needs a bit of tweaking:
“The ESIA concludes that, based on all assessments and analyses, the project may proceed once adverse impacts are mitigated and the identified community concerns are fully addressed in accordance with the recommended mitigation measures outlined in this report.”
Never, in the long history of conclusions, has a conclusion been more wrong.
In this review, I’ve focused solely on the infrastructure provisions contained in the ESIA, and on that basis alone, it is a substandard document and must be rejected by the PDA; until its major flaws have been rectified.
This ESIA has revealed some alarming deficiencies and inconsistencies in the planning and design of the Levera resort and golf course. Even more worryingly, these major flaws have been revealed too late in the design-construction process, when many of them cannot be changed nor mitigated against.
In addition to the egregious deficiencies of the ESIA itself, I’m extremely disappointed by the procedures followed up to this point, and the manner in which key information was disclosed to stakeholders – or rather withheld.
Major elements of the infrastructure master plan have been given scant attention in the document, or none at all. More disturbingly, it is totally unacceptable for the consultants to bury the potential destruction of Grenada’s iconic Welcome Stone, hidden within an illegible figure without any further elaboration. In fact: it is downright shameful.
In our next article, GLA will examine the ecological and social impacts of the Levera project, and further weaknesses in the ESIA document.
S. Brian Samuel is a Member of the Board of the Grenada Land Actors (GLA), and reviewed the ESIA in this capacity