Dear Editor,
Please tell me that the Environmental Protection Agency was misquoted in the article `EPA exempts two companies from impact studies for quarry licences’ appearing in the Stabroek News of June 8, 2021.
The article refers to the granting of two quarry licences covering separately 2,289 acres and 1,200 acres which are estimated to produce a combined total of approximately 13 million tonnes of stone. Your article quotes the EPA a saying that the “blasting proximity puts everyone out of the radius so no harm will come to anyone”. For the EPA to hold such a view requires their complete lack of knowledge of the role of the EPA and the purpose of an impact assessment – a proposition I find hard to accept.
Demonstrating a greater knowledge of project finance than of its own Act, the EPA gratuitously praised the rates of returns of the two quarries, with one claiming a payback period of one year! And can we ask about any tax holiday, or better yet, a tax exemption?
If the statement by the EPA is indeed true, then the next thing is that we might hear that the oil is so far out that “no harm will come to anyone”.
Sincerely,
Christopher Ram
