By TAMARA McKENZIE,Assistant News Editor,tamara@nasguard.com

While the government has a number of tourism-related projects on the drawing board that would hopefully pump millions into the Bahamian economy once completed, a local environmentalist is expressing concern about some of them. On Tuesday, Sam Duncombe, Director of the ReEarth environmental organization said she had some reservations about several proposed developments, claiming that they could damage the environment or pollute the water table when the work gets underway.

Duncombe said she was concerned about some projects proposed for western New Providence, which would be sitting on top of the water table. She also expressed concern about golf courses, alleging that some of them, even though the government might have approved them, could contaminate the water table. And according to her, a number of chemicals could be leaking into the groundwater once the golf courses are completed.

"Water is going to be a very serious issue in the future when it comes to these projects and I think that it's something we really need to address, and we really need to be protecting our water table at all costs," Duncombe said.

The ReEarth Director said many environmentalists and concerned Bahamians are left in the dark about the details of some proposed projects. "We need to know about all of the developments, so that people who will be affected can have their say on what's going on, and that's what a democracy is all about," she said. "We can't have government in the sunshine if it's cloudy some days and we still have some issues that unfortunately continue no matter which government is in power. But people want to be involved in the forward movement of the country and can only bring issues to light if people speak about them."

Duncombe said while the government had so far outlined a number of environmental initiatives that have the backing of local environmentalists, such as the discontinuance of wetland dredging and the proposed relocation of the Port from Bay Street to Arawak Cay instead of Clifton Pier, many of them were still awaiting the promised National Development Plan that was heavily touted during the 2007 election campaign.

"That [plan] would alleviate a lot of the problems we are having, because if you identify critical ecosystems that cannot be harmed then that is a way of protecting those ecosystems by creating essentially an inventory of all of the places that should not be bothered so that's an issue that I think needs to be dealt with right away," Duncombe said.

The government in its manifesto, outlined that in order to ensure the environmental sustainability of developments in the country, the FNM, among other initiatives, would: Adopt and implement policies to protect and enhance the environment, enact legislation to further project coral reefs, sea grass beds and mangroves and stop the present assault on the environmental integrity of the country resulting from indiscriminate dumping, unsightly abandoned buildings, derelict vehicles, excavation of hills and the back-filling of wetlands.