Govt using compulsory acquisition to acquire Eleuthera land for airport

The government is moving ahead with acquiring the land to expand the North Eleuthera International Airport through compulsory acquisition, Director of Aviation Algernon Cargill told Guardian Business yesterday, though, he said, as is required by law, the government plans to compensate the Harbour Island Commonage for that land.

Cargill said the government hopes there can eventually be “some sort of trade-off” for the use of the commonage’s land, but he said those negotiations will come after the airport is constructed.

“We’re now in the final stages of the acquisition and the commonage has been advised by government,” said Cargill.

“When the acquisition is completed, we can move ahead with the construction of the airport and use the funding we have already arranged for this purpose.

“Under the Acquisition of Land Act, it does call for compensation. The government will compensate.”

According to Cargill, the government will pay to the commonage whatever it determines is a fair amount through a valuation of the land.

However, the Harbour Island Commonage has been in negotiations with the government for many months over its imminent use of the land and hoped to negotiate terms for the use of the land that both parties agree to.

Harbour Island Commonage Vice Chairman Benjamin Simmons said the commoners thought that headway was being made with the government for an equitable deal on the airport’s expansion.

However, he said those negotiations seemed to break down in December.

“We came to a positive agreement to work together for the betterment of the commonage, the betterment of the airport and the betterment of the community as a whole,” Simmons said.

“The government responded very positively and asked for a meeting on January 2019, to be held within a month and a month later the committee went to Nassau. We had a further meeting with the government and we were led to believe there was an understanding of a partnership moving forward in the expansion of the airport.”

Now the commonage is facing the government’s immediate takeover of the land through compulsory acquisition.

The Harbour Island Commonage is now moving to reopen negotiations with the government, not only on the airport land, but all of the commonage land the government has occupied for decades without fairly compensating, or compensating at all, the rightful holders of those tracts of land.

And while the committee does not want to take the matter to court for fear of hampering the airport’s development, it has stated that it will if it has to.

The committee’s Chairman Wesley Percentie said the committee has developed ways to work in partnership with the government on use of the land.

Cargill said those kinds of partnerships will be looked at after the airport is built.

“Right now the immediate focus is to move ahead with the acquisition, because you’ve seen the growth of the North Eleuthera market, the airport doesn’t lend itself to the growth of tourism,” he said.

“North Eleuthera is now one of the busiest airports in The Bahamas outside of LPIA.”

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/govt-using-compulsory-acquisition-to-acquire-eleuthera-land-for-airport/