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alexk
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The Privy Council has cleared the last impediment blocking the Ministry of Works and Transport from resuming work on the first phase of the Churchill Roosevelt Highway extension to Manzanilla.
The United Kingdom-based court yesterday rejected environmental activist group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS)’s final appeal over the dismissal of its lawsuit challenging a Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) granted by the Environmental Management Authority (EMA).
The decision means that an injunction granted to the group by the local Court of Appeal, pending the final appeal, was automatically removed.
The five Law Lords, who heard the appeal at the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court in London, England, last month, did not give reasons for their decision, which was communicated directly to the parties.
The full judgment is expected to be released by the court on October 8.
In its appeal, the group was challenging two successive decisions by the High Court and Court of Appeal to strike out its lawsuit, in which it was challenging the process used by the EMA to grant the ministry the CEC for the first phase between Cumuto and Guaico. The five-kilometre segment is estimated to cost $400 million. Both local courts ruled that the case was filed outside the three-month statutory limit.
While FFOS was required to file the lawsuit three months after the EMA granted the ministry the CEC on June 22, last year, it filed it exactly three months after it learned of the decision on July 6.
In its substantive lawsuit, the group was claiming that the proposed route infringes on the Aripo Savannas forest reserve, which was declared an environmentally sensitive area by the EMA in 2007.
The reserve consists of 1,780 hectares of land which is home to over 500 species of plants including seven rare species and two endemic kinds of grass as well the endangered ocelot.
In defence of the claim, the EMA denied any wrongdoing in its process and pointed out that the CEC contained safeguards including constant monitoring by its team of technical experts to ensure compliance.
In its decision in March, the Court of Appeal also agreed with High Court Judge Kevin Ramcharan that most of the grounds raised by the group in its judicial review lawsuit are devoid of merit.
In a release issued yesterday, the EMA stated: “This judgment confirms the EMA’s rigorous process which has once again, withstood the scrutiny of the highest courts.”
However, none of the three courts that presided over the case did an in-depth review of the EMA’s process as that would have been done if the substantive case went to trial.
In a release issued shortly after, the group said that it was saddened but not discouraged by the outcome.
“FFOS is proud to have fought to protect the voiceless in this precious eco-system (the largest and last remaining naturally occurring savannas) in our country and to have petitioned the court for the highway to be simply be moved 400 metres south of the Savannas to protect rare, threatened, endemic, endangered, vulnerable species and the legally designated environmentally sensitive species, the ocelot,” it said.
The group was represented by Anand Ramlogan, SC, Richard Wald and Alvin Pariagsingh. The EMA’s legal team included Peter Knox, QC, Amira Rahaman, Ravi Heffes-Doon and Janelle Partap. The ministry and the National Infrastructure Development Company Limited (Nidco) was represented by Ian Benjamin, SC, and Tamika Jorsling.