Update
PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - Several organisations and residents have called on authorities to upgrade Plettenberg Bay’s popular Central beach – a project they claim was placed on the backburner while the controversial small boat harbour plans had been dragging on for more than a decade.
“While all this dithering has been going on [about the small boat harbour], there is one thing everyone does agree on, and that is that Central beach needs upgrading. The badly needed redevelopment of the area has been frozen for more than a decade by the ongoing saga around the harbour development,” said Save Plett Alliance spokesperson Basil van Rooyen.
The Save Plett Alliance is a combined effort between the Plettenberg Bay Community Environmental Forum, the Plettenberg Bay Ratepayers' and Residents' Association, and several individual concerned residents. It was created to challenge the proposed development, which they regarded “as completely inappropriate for Plett”.
“We urge the municipality to put this farce behind us completely and to call for a competition by architects, designers and planners to see who can come up with the best plan to make our main beach area worthy of Plett and then to go through a proper and transparent tender approval process.”
Van Rooyen said the alliance members were relieved when the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning informed the developer – Western Cape Marina Investments – last month that they had missed the deadline for submitting an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the proposed R4-billion Plett harbour development.
“The development cannot proceed until an EIA has been approved. The developer had also no requested an extension before the due date, so the developer would have to start the entire process from scratch if he ever wanted to continue. That seems unlikely in view of current economic conditions in the country and the enormous period (about 14 years) that this application has dragged on for," Van Rooyen said.
“We have been here before when the same department rejected the scoping report on October 21, 2014 on the basis that it transgressed numerous laws. We assumed the battle was over.”
However, in a letter dated December 14, 2016, the Western Cape MEC for local government, environmental affairs and development planning overrode his own department’s decision and approved the initial scoping report with some reservations, thus opening the whole matter all over.
“While the developer seems to have lost interest, the company does have an agreement of sorts with the Bitou municipality, however fraught, which the municipality has not yet cancelled, although we believe that in view of the missed deadline, it has no alternative but to cancel the agreement now.”
Van Rooyen added that this would then free the municipality up to consider beachfront upgrading projects.
Bitou municipality has not yet responded to queries about the proposal.
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