Part 1 of this two-part article inferred that the Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan (CLWUP) should be guided by the long-range comprehensive plan. The CLWUP team makes the case that the preparation of the CLWUP “will build on many existing plans and studies.”
In asking what residents want in the CLWUP, it would have been useful, it seems, before or during the town hall meetings, to make clear to the public that there are some things that must be in place to support development of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Foremost among such needs is important social infrastructure, such as landfills and sewerage. More intense rain events will require larger drainage systems. Sea level rise, exacerbated by storm surge or flood events, will result in permanent or periodic inundation of some coastal areas necessitating relocation of infrastructure and housing. Most of this infrastructure cannot be placed simply anywhere, so understanding the space demand and location-specific requirements is important. This is not to suggest that the planning team does not have that information. Just that it would have been useful in setting the context within which all other land uses are considered.
When considering competing demands for land and water use, four other sectors that require special attention are tourism, agriculture, housing, and the natural environment.
The USVI is a tourism-dependent economy. The financial incentives designed by the administrative and legislative branches of government to boost economic growth in the USVI have been heavily skewed toward the tourism sector. Yet, despite the importance placed on tourism and the sometimes-questionable investments by public and private interests, there is no tourism sector development plan.
A tourism sector plan is required under Objective F of the tourism goal in the planning guidelines and, more generally, by the legal requirement for long-range functional plans. Even without the policy and legal requirements, how useful is a land and water use plan that does not adequately address the space and resource demands and impacts of the largest economic sector?
That begs the question of what is meant by ‘adequate.’ I would expect a tourism sector development strategy to consider issues such as:
- Minimizing competing or conflicting use of land, water, and other natural resource assets.
- Efficiency in provision of supporting infrastructure (especially sewerage, roads, walkways, and public transportation). In this context, should the practice of locating hotels anywhere be continued or should some degree of clustering be encouraged?
- Reducing vulnerability of the tourism sector and USVI economy, possibly by refocusing and restructuring incentive programs to encourage investment in smaller, boutique properties.
- Linking development of larger hotels to meeting housing objectives, possibly by developing a resort-residential strategy to encourage investment in both tourism and housing.
- Strategies and mechanisms to ensure that tourism directly supports the human, social, economic, and natural resources development of the territory.
The 2021 Virgin Islands Agricultural Plan has as its main goal the pursuit of “food security and sovereignty” yet ignores the issue of the continuing loss of agricultural land to other uses. Implementation of a food security and sovereignty strategy would require expansion of acreage under agriculture, intensification of farming efforts, and increased investment in technology and agro-industry.
The agricultural plan also notes the likely impact of climate change on agriculture and food security, including increasing temperature and changing rainfall patterns. This raises additional issues directly relevant to the CLWUP. First is the issue of precipitation and surface runoff. Higher temperatures with longer dry spells will affect the types of crops grown and could even result in changes in the location of land suitable for agriculture. The way land is used outside of agricultural areas has been reducing recharge of aquifers, while intense rain events result in loss of soil. Reducing loss of agricultural land, the impact on agricultural land from other land uses, and ensuring water availability (by capture or conveyance) for agricultural purposes require not only deciding between competing uses but also allocating more land for agriculture and space for supporting infrastructure. In this context, is the CLWUP intended to function as the guide for the agricultural long-range functional plan or vice versa?
My inclusion of housing in this narrative is simply as a reminder that current rules and practices related to housing can have significant impacts on quality of life. A participant in the town hall session on St. Thomas on Feb. 28, 2023, voiced the issue of sewage effluent surfacing as a result of (he thinks) an increase in occupancy from a single-family dwelling to a multi-family dwelling. I witnessed a similar occurrence, which I attributed to thin soils and a failed on-site effluent disposal system. However, anecdotal information from St. Thomas and St. John regarding periodic sewage effluent problems in homes at the lower elevations of municipal systems suggests the need for a significant upgrade in the sewerage systems. Such upgrade will most likely require additional land, particularly in the more urbanized areas.
Other pertinent housing-related practices include: (1) permitting and construction practices that channel surface runoff onto private property or the public roadways; and (2) allowing the construction of hotel and residential properties without adequate parking, resulting in the public thoroughfares being used as parking lots. The first practice results in damage to public roads and increases maintenance cost, wasting resources that could be deployed to meet other development needs. Using the public roads for parking increases the risk to users.
The placement of new housing projects requires special attention in the CLWUP. As part of the process of developing public housing projects in recent years, the public was periodically given the opportunity to provide comments on the reports of ‘Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environment’ by the project. The notices also stated that the projects were in floodplains. While it is expected that projects in floodplains will include design standards and infrastructure to reduce flooding of the units, the assessments did not focus on the impact of the environment on residents. Based on the social and economic impact of housing units similarly located, care should be taken to ensure that people are not placed in situations that increase their vulnerability.
Nature benefits humans in many ways, generally referred to as ecosystem services. To maintain the flow of benefits, humans must set aside different types of ecosystems AND ensure that human activities do not degrade such systems. In the USVI, initiatives for ecosystem management are scattered throughout the mandates of several agencies. Most of the mandates and environmental management programs fall within the responsibilities of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DPNR). Within the DPNR and throughout the government, environmental management plans are thematic and compartmentalized. For example, the fish and wildlife programs address wildlife and habitats, not biodiversity and ecosystems. The watershed management plans produced by the DPNR prior to 2017 focused on pollution control while the post-2017 plans, funded through a Federal Emergency Management Authority Hazard Mitigation Grant in 2019, focused on actions “to reduce flooding and improve water quality and resiliency”.
Ecosystems and ecosystem services are not prioritized in these thematic plans and, where mentioned, are articulated mainly as nature-based solutions to reduce flooding and the impact of storms on coastal areas. The Areas of Particular Concern planning process, which addressed ecosystems in a localized area, has been largely ignored.
There is no overall conservation strategy that links the various objectives, programs, and plans, making it difficult for the CLWUP to translate conservation concepts and strategies in an integrated way.
The extent to which the CLWUP can integrate development objectives and sector plans may be discerned by reviewing the report titled “Guiding Principles, Policies & Working Strategies,” which previews the proposed content of the CLWUP. An assessment of the guiding report will not be provided here, though some general comments are offered.
As mentioned in Part 1 of the article, the CLWUP intends to provide policies that should be articulated in the long-range comprehensive plan, the long-range functional plans, and the four-year territorial development program. The guiding document does not state how the competing objectives and strategies of those plans will be addressed by the CLWUP, nor does it identify the decision process.
The guiding document starts with a reasonable theory of change (page 2), which it then ignores in its first principle – Govern Effectively. The proposed policies and strategies do not reflect an understanding of the importance of governance in governing and, by extension, the necessity for transparency, accountability, access to information, and institutional processes that facilitate the foregoing. The proposal to mandate update of the CLWUP every five to ten years suggests that the plan is neither comprehensive nor long-range.
It would be useful if the guiding document indicates how the CLWUP will address current land use issues, such as:
- Continued sale and lack of access to landlocked parcels.
- Subdivision rules and practices that create ‘private roads,’ which often result in social hardships.
- Non-compliance with zoning ordinances and absence of a legal framework for the community to challenge development decisions that run contrary to environmental laws and social development objectives set out in the long-range comprehensive plan or long-range functional plans.
- Absence of a risk assessment process that integrates comprehensive disaster management, climate change, and social and economic impact.
One way to increase the chances of the CLWUP to meet it equity, future focus, sustainability, and effectiveness principles is to introduce into the plan and USVI planning law and processes the use of strategic environment and social assessment (SESA) for assessment of policies, sector development plans (long-range functional plans), local area plans (such as watershed, area of particular concern, and enterprise zones), and zoning changes.
Most importantly, the CLWUP is only part of the process of rulemaking for land and water use management in the USVI. As the CLWUP website states, “The Comp Plan by itself is a guiding document. New or updated laws, rules, and regulations consistent with the Comp Plan will need to be passed by the Legislature or adopted by departments and agencies”. That rulemaking includes updating the zoning ordinance and supporting criteria for determination of use zones, building codes, and land management practices.
Progress towards a just and sustainable society requires taking the correct steps in the right direction. The journey continues.
*Lloyd Gardner is an environmental planner and resides on St. Thomas.
