The appeal of the CZM decision was filed in November 2014.  We waited a year and a half for the Virgin Islands Board of Land Use Appeals to finally get around to scheduling a hearing on the case.  And although the CZM permits were “stayed” pending the appeal, that stay had no real effect because Governor Mapp had declined to sign the Major Water permit, which prevented it from becoming effective.

The BLUA hearing felt like a kangaroo court – the hearing began before our attorney arrived (she was delayed on the ferry from St Thomas), the board were dismissive of our efforts to introduce evidence submitted by federal agencies, claiming it wasn’t “before the Committee”, and most surprisingly they blamed the appellants (us) for causing a 16 month delay to the project when, in fact, it was BLUA who had caused the delay by not scheduling a hearing.

However, even with all of that, in the end BLUA decided to require that the separate CZM Land and CZM Water permits be consolidated (since they were two parts of a single project) and to increase the performance bond to $10 million.  SEG did not get what they had hoped for, which was a clear and clean affirmation of the CZM permits.

It will turn out that the BLUA decision to require permit consolidation will cause Summers End major problems in the future, but for the time being SEG proclaimed victory, and Save Coral Bay decided to file our first lawsuit – a Writ of Review filed in Virgin Islands Superior Court challenging the rulings of the CZM Committee and the Board of Land Use Appeals.