Even though Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart welcomed the news that the ReGen project is nearing its financial close, he says Premier Wayne Panton must explain why the project has been repeatedly delayed.
“Whenever the Premier does announce a final contract signing, he must also answer for the serious challenges his delays have created for the country. In particular, he must account for every dollar of the considerable cost increase the country will face,” McTaggart said in a statement issued Monday, in response to Panton’s announcement of a new deadline for the multi-million-dollar project.
Panton, in a statement issued Friday, said that “negotiations between the Government and the Dart-led consortium are progressing steadily”.
The premier said the financial close for the project is now expected by 30 Sept. and the public-private partnership team recently agreed to a new project long-stop date of 30 Nov.
However, McTaggart said if the contract is completed in September, “it will be some two years late, and as we expected, this delay has increased the cost and risk to the project”.
He added, “The time is coming when the Premier can no longer dodge questions. He must come clean to the country and explain why the cost of this project has spiralled.”
ReGen, which was first signed under the Progressives-led administration in March 2021, has faced delays in getting to the finish line, but the nature of those delays has not been made public.
However, Panton, who took over the project in October 2021, said the ReGen agreement “contained dozens” of conditions that still needed to be negotiated and agreed upon, despite Opposition claims to the contrary.
McTaggart pointed to the public dispute between Panton and former Deputy Premier Chris Saunders over the actual cost of the project, saying it would increase significantly, “perhaps to $1.5 billion”, owing to government’s delay.
“That is more than double the expected costs when the last Government signed the Project Agreement in 2021. This extra cost is down to the PACT government’s inattention to the project and the reopening of previously closed issues,” he said.
Running out of space
McTaggart said the project delays increase the risk that Cayman will run out of usable landfill space.
“Had the contract been closed by the initially agreed deadline of September 2021, the space left at [George Town] landfill would have lasted for decades. The two-year delay means the country could run out of landfill space in the next few years, with the ReGen facilities still needing to be completed,” he said.
The Opposition Leader said under the 2021 agreement, the cost of the new facilities was then fixed at $205 million, with the financing cost being bundled in with the operating expenses, so the contract would mean government paying an average of $163 per tonne over the 25-year life of that project.
The expected total cost of the contract in cash terms when the 2021 agreement was signed was just under $670 million, he said.
The premier, he said, has conceded that the costs would now double to $1.5 billion.
Accountability
“He must account for every dollar of the cost increase to live up to his claims of transparency. No excuses by the Premier will hide that the reason for the dramatic increase is solely the delays that PACT has caused and the renegotiation of previously agreed contract items,” McTaggart said.
He said back in 2021 it was estimated there were five-to-six years of landfill space remaining if Cayman continued to use the landfill at the existing rate.
“Our plan would have meant only three years of landfilling while the waste-to-energy facility was built. The Premier’s delays have added at least another two years of continued landfilling at the current rate,” he said.
McTaggart said if facilities do not now get built until late 2026 at the earliest, “it is plain to see why the risk of landfill space running out has become critical”.
Cayman, he said, is fast running out of time and that space.
Project ReGen, he said, delivers a long-term solution with state-of-the-art waste facilities instead of the “unsustainable reliance on landfills”.
It is also “good for the environment by converting trash into energy, removing landfill gas from the George Town landfill, and converting that into energy rather than leaking into the atmosphere”, McTaggart added.
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