Humphrey approved Vale View

The Town and Country Planning Division turned down the first application from Vale View Terrace developer, Gowkaran Mahabir, to build townhouses on the slopes of St Lucien Road, Diego Martin, but subsequently granted Mahabir permission after the intervention of former minister John Humphrey  in December 2000. Documents from the Town and Country Planning Division reaching Newsday show that in a letter to the Managing Director/CEO of the Environmental Agency, Dr Dave Mc Intosh from  Senior Land Use Planner, Rodney Ramlogan wrote that Mahabir’s St Lucien Road development was “consistent with the relief, granted on appeal,” on December 6, 2000, by Humphrey, against the Notice of Refusal to Mahabir’s first application. The refusal notice is decided upon by an advisory panel, which made its decision against Mahabir in 2000. The letter from Town and Country’s Ramlogan assured the EMA that Mahabir would be allowed to widen Vale View by 4.5 metres or 15 feet, even though this meant aquiring part of some residents’ private properties. It did not say how this would be done. A letter of a site by the EMA in Decemer 2002 shows that an EMA officer included a comment that the developer had promised to widen Vale View. But some Vale View residents have said they will not sell or be forced out.

Yesterday morning work continued as usual on St Lucien Road without a  police presence, despite instructions from the Diego Martin Regional Corporation for Mahabir to have police regulate traffic while he restored the surface of Vale View, which he dug up last week. Trucks and bulldozers from Ian Ramdeen blocked traffic occasionally and continued their onslaught on the sidewalks. The Corporation also demanded that Mahabir fix the damage to the mountainside. Meanwhile, an engineer who preferred not to be named, said yesterday that work going on did not seem to be restorative in nature, but of construction. And this despite the order from the corporation. Minister of Public Utilities and the Environment, Rennie Dumas said yesterday he had written to the EMA for the Vale View Certificate of Environmental Clearance  to be checked to see if the conditionalities of the EMA clearance certificate were being met. The EMA itself despatched an inspector to the site yesterday to see what was going on.  The report should be ready by Monday and will be submitted then to  the minister. The site is an old abandoned quarry, on which Mahabir of Valsayn Avenue, Valsayn, first built townhouses two years ago. His brother boasted to neighbours that each was being sold for $800,000.