Hurricane Irma recovery consumed virtually all of our collective energy from September 2017 through at least the middle of 2018.  Many of us were without power or communications until sometime in 2018.

In spite of the lack of basic needs, or possibly being aware of the handcaps faced by the community, the Summers End Group was hard at work with multiple submissions to the Army Corps.  Following their pre-hurricane submission in August 2017, and the Corps request for additional information, there were additional submissions in December 2017 and again in February 2018.  We will discuss all of this in greater detail when the story of the Army Corps permit is told, but the relevance to the Coastal Zone Management permit derives from the fact that in each of these submissions there were changes in various components of the project, including slip design, historic resource avoidance (18th century shipwreck), new and changed environmental studies, and new mitigations proposed.  NONE OF THOSE MODIFICATIONS WERE EVER SUBMITTED TO CZM FOR REVIEW.

The CZM Commission reviewed the SEG project ONE TIME, in August 2014.  That review was based on the habitat surveys available at that time.  Hurricane Irma had tremendous impacts, particularly to the fringing mangroves, and it would certainly have been a topic of concern for CZM to review the changed environmental baseline.

In the general elections of 2018, Governor Mapp was challenged by Albert Bryan Jr., running under a campaign slogan of “Change Course Now.”  Many Virgin Islanders were exhausted from the recovery efforts following hurricanes Irma and Maria, and this probably contributed to the defeat of Mapp and the election of Albert Bryan Jr.

For four years the Summers End Group CZM permits could not move forward due to SEG’s failure to resubmit to the St John CZM Committee for “consolidation” (as required by BLUA) and absent consolidation, inability to submit to Governor Mapp and the Legislature for ratification.  However, once Bryan replaced Mapp in Government House in early 2019, things began to look brighter for the Summers End Group.