Sampson Cay approval invalid because government assessed the wrong project, Village KC tells court

A key environmental approval granted to Yntegra for its East Sampson Cay development was based on a different version of the project from the one the developer is now bound to build, lawyers for Turtlegrass told the Supreme Court.

Peter Village, KC, appearing for Sampson Cay Retreat Limited (Turtlegrass), said the government approved the Rosewood Exuma project on the strength of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) that never assessed the altered plans the developer later put forward. He argued that this alone is enough for the court to quash the approval, Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) 2894.

The clearest example, he said, is a jetty in North Bay. The EIA’s own plans contradict each other: one shows a hockey stick-shaped jetty of 247 feet, while another shows no jetty at all. The environmental management plan (EMP), produced months later, shows a jetty of 390.5 feet, roughly 150 feet longer than anything in the EIA. The EMP makes no mention of the change.

That matters because CEC 2894 requires the developer to build in line with the EMP. The approval therefore ties Yntegra to a structure whose environmental effects were never assessed and never put to the public for consultation.

Mr Village told the court that an assessment must be of a fixed, clearly defined project. If a developer changes its plans, it must produce a new or amended assessment and consult the public again.

“What you can’t do is shift the sands,” he said.

He said the longer jetty would sit in waters with strong Atlantic currents that carry sand in and out of North Bay and replenish its beaches. Any obstruction affects that movement, and a longer one more so, he argued. The EIA also showed an enclosed service dock that is not carried forward in the EMP.

“You can’t consult on inconsistent proposals,” he said, adding that possibly “the developer didn’t even know what he wanted.”

The jetty was not the only change made after the assessment. Earlier in the hearing, Fred Smith, KC, told the court that a massive seawall and breakwater in North Bay was added after public consultation had closed, and was never put to the public.

Mr Village also said the geotechnical works approved separately under CEC 2400A were never assessed in the EIA at all. This was despite the developer’s own enabling works report stating they “can have significant negative environmental impacts.” Turtlegrass says those works saw contractors bulldoze large areas of the cay in July and August.

The wastewater treatment plant needed to serve the resort is not covered by any CEC application. The EIA said the details would come in the EMP, and the EMP said only that the arrangements would be decided before construction starts. “Too late. You want to know now,” Mr Village said.

He said the pattern extended to how the impacts themselves were measured. The tables rating the project’s environmental impacts were identical in both versions of the EIA and in the EMP, even though the jetty changed between them. The same tables showed the proposed mitigation measures changing nothing. The EIA’s 27 “severe” impacts, which it defines as “permanent, irreversible changes” to the environment, stayed exactly as they were.

“The mitigation has absolutely zero impact,” Mr Village said.

He added that no assessment was ever made of what impacts would remain after mitigation, or why they should be considered acceptable.

Mr Village also said the developer promised in 2024 to carry out seasonal surveys of migratory seabirds and the threatened white-crowned pigeon, but never did them. No turtle nesting survey was carried out either, although young turtles were seen on the site known as Turtle Rock. He compared the case to Hardy, an English case in which planning permission was quashed because wildlife surveys were deferred, and called Sampson Cay “Hardy on stilts.”

He said the EIA also failed to assess the combined impact of the project alongside neighbouring developments, including Over Yonder Cay and Turtlegrass’s own site.

Mr Village stressed that Turtlegrass was not asking the court to second-guess the developer’s environmental judgments, only to examine “whether it in fact assesses what it has to assess.”

“Unfortunately, they failed to do that quite miserably,” he said.

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