Editorial | Heed Allgrove’s advice on Bernard Lodge city

Not too many people would question the engineering competence of John Allgrove, or claim that he operates with hidden ­agendas. So, when Mr Allgrove weighs in on the debate on Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ plan for a new city on the Bernard Lodge lands, we take him seriously. The Government should, too.

For the record, Mr Allgrove is a civil engineer, a doyen of the discipline in Jamaica. He was once the chief engineer at the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), including during its heyday when it was undertaking many of the major transformational projects in the island.

Earlier this month, writing in this newspaper, Mr Allgrove reminded us of a 1970 report on development plans for the Hellshire Hills, “to prevent the invasion of the excellent agricultural lands of southeast St Catherine”, which, of course, include the 29,000 acres of the Bernard Lodge Estate. He also recalled the National Physical Development Plan for the island, produced in 1972 by the Town Planning Department. “This will show that we have already gobbled up thousands of acres of our best agricultural lands for urban expansion, for example, north of Spanish Town, south of Old Harbour, Barnett Estates, Ironshore, Rose Hall and Llandovery,” Mr Allgrove said of the latter document.

The most frequently cited statistic in that regard is that of the 37 per cent of Jamaica that was deemed suitable for agriculture, only 19.5 per cent is now available, with the bulk of the decline having taken place in the period since Mr Allgrove and his colleagues at the UDC penned their report on the Hellshire Hills and the then Town Planning Department articulated its ideas for Jamaica’s physical development. Mr Holness’ city would accelerate the very concerns that exercised planners 50 years ago.

For instance, the new city, which would ­accommodate 17,000 homes, as well as commercial, industrial and supporting infrastructure, would mean the expropriation from agriculture of upwards of 4,600 acres of the St Catherine plains, whose alluvial soils the Government’s National Planning Agency described as varying “in texture, from sand and loam to clay loams and are, in general, the most fertile soils in the island and regarded as Class 1 soils”.

NO SOLUTIONS

Several hundred acres of these lands are already under concrete in real estate and other developments. The continuation of Mr Holness’ scheme, as conceptualised, would be an unintended signal that Government has given up on, or has no answer to, the problems faced by Jamaica’s agriculture sector, or for the reduction of the country’s US$900-million food import bill. The logical extension of this would be that policies for food security are no longer at the forefront of Mr Holness’ thinking.

We understand the prestige of building a new city. But, as we have noted before, this newspaper believes that it would make better sense to, rather than encroaching on Bernard Lodge, integrate the Clarendon parish capital of May Pen, a gritty, decaying urban centre, into the project for transforming the nearby Vernamfield, the old US Air Force base, into an aerotropolis as part of the plan for making Jamaica a global logistics centre.

Mr Allgrove, as per the UDC study, offers Hellshire, with its 30,000 acres, of which a third was plotted for urban development, as an alternative to Bernard Lodge. “This land has no alternative or better use, certainly not for agriculture … ,” he noted. Further, much of the infrastructure for the development is in place; its elevation makes it not prone to flooding; and it is much cooler than the flatlands to its north.

The bottom line: The Government has options other than Bernard Lodge. We, however, are not as optimistic as Mr Allgrove that the PM’s ordered relook of the project, whose reviewers or terms of reference were not disclosed, will be as robust as required. But we hope.