National Roads Authority officials made a rare public appearance Tuesday to explain why the proposed extension of the East-West Arterial highway from Newlands to Frank Sound Road was mapped out in its current location.
A public uproar over the road’s path arose partly because of plans to route a portion of the highway extension through lands owned by the Cayman Islands National Trust, held as part of an undeveloped area in the center of Grand Cayman known as the Mastic Reserve.
However, authority managing director Edward Howard said Tuesday that the road’s path was gazetted – made public – in early May 2005, well before the National Trust purchased tracts of land around it.
“Since we gazetted the road in 2005, the Trust has continued to purchase properties,” Mr. Howard said.
According to NRA maps reviewed by the Caymanian Compass, a parcel of land now bisected by the proposed East-West Arterial extension, just west of Frank Sound Road, was purchased in 2006. Another large parcel on either side of the road’s path was purchased by the Trust in 2011, authority records show.
The path of the road still goes through small areas of land along the southern edge of the Mastic Reserve that the Trust owned prior to 2004, but Mr. Howard said those land grabs were far less intrusive than what is now proposed for the road.
“The NRA moved the highway away from the National Trust land as far as possible,” Mr. Howard said.
The need for what was then referred to as the “central highway” through Grand Cayman was identified in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. Ivan left the main eastern road between George Town, Bodden Town and East End in shambles, with entire sections wiped out or impassable.
Then-Infrastructure Minister Gilbert McLean asked the NRA at the time to look at a “hurricane resilient type of highway,” but doing so was trickier than it seemed, Mr. Howard said.
“Any major highway [to the eastern districts] had to avoid the two freshwater lenses in East End and North Side,” he said. “We’ve done our best to stay away from that.”
An alternate proposal for an eastern highway was made in the late 1990s, but Mr. Howard said an NRA analysis indicated that route would have been significantly more expensive for a couple of reasons.
“There really wasn’t any way to bring a major corridor through … other than how we actually have it now,” he said.
Mr. Howard said the authority and Works Minister Kurt Tibbetts met with Trust officials last week about potential alternate routes for the eastern road. Three plans were discussed and have been mapped out by the NRA. Mr. Howard said the authority had no idea at this point whether any of the options were feasible, either from the standpoint of cost or engineering.
The National Trust may have more say in the taking of its lands than the average property owner under the Roads Law. The National Trust Law gives the organization the power to declare its properties “inalienable” – meaning they cannot be bought, sold or transferred.
Trust bosses believe the law creates a “legal impasse” that could prevent government from using its statutory powers under the Roads Law to take Trust land for the road extension project.
Government has the right under the Roads Law to seize private property for public interest roads projects. Land owners are usually offered financial compensation, though when the parties have not been able to agree to a payment, the arbitration process has dragged on, in some cases, for more than seven years.
A request for comment from the National Trust was not returned by press time Wednesday.
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