The Editor
The Anguillian

Dear Sir:

My wife Connie and I first came to Anguilla in 1985 and have returned every year since. Over that time, we’ve become increasingly dismayed by the transformation of the island we came to love all those years ago, but we’ve always thought it proper to keep our opinions to ourselves.

How much development is too much development is an issue for Anguillians to decide, and we’ve long felt that visitors should just keep their mouths shut, their wallets open, and feel confident that the people of Anguilla themselves will solve that problem eventually.

The current controversy over the dolphin pens on Blowing Point beach, though, really does cry out for a visitor’s perspective. In recent letters to the editor, Dr Paul Webster and many others have persuasively identified many of the disastrous consequences of that project if it is allowed to proceed: serious environmental damage to the beach itself and the waters around it ; the loss of beach access for visitors and Anguillians alike; and (incredibly) the shameless turning of Anguilla’s own national symbol into a cheap circus trick, all to allow an off-island corporation to make a dollar by amusing day trippers from St. Martin.

These are all powerful arguments against this project, and should be enough to convince any government, that listens to its people, to put a stop to this venture. But another important consideration seems not yet to have been raised - the undoubtedly harmful effect it will have on the Anguillian-owned and staffed businesses on the Blowing Point beach itself. That pristine beach is the goose that lays the golden eggs for them. Their many visitors come to swim in its still unpolluted waters, walk on an unspoiled beach, watch a sunset from the point, visit with Anguillian church groups picnicking on weekends - enjoy, in short, the “real” Anguilla that they have come to love over the years.

We know this is true because we have long been among that group. We’ve made Mitch and Marjorie Connor’s beachfront apartments our vacation home for many, many, many years; we eat dinner regularly at Marjorie MacLean’s Ferryboat Inn; we do our grocery shopping at Ashley’s and Benny’s; we buy our desserts from Amy’s and our ribs from Jim’s. Why would we and the many others tourists like us that have stayed for years in those accommodations, and have happily left our dollars behind in those businesses, want to come back to Blowing Point in the future if our little slice of the “real” Anguilla turns into a shabby tourist trap not even worthy of St. Martin? Should we all go somewhere else on the island, or just give Anguilla up for lost at last and go somewhere else in the Caribbean from now on? Either way, how can this be good for the Blowing Point economy? Why should these good Anguillian people potentially pay that price solely so that an off island corporation can fatten its wallet at their expense? Economic development is always a matter of trade-offs, and those decisions can sometime be hard, but surely the price here, both economically and environmentally, is far too high to justify going forward with this project.

We hope Anguillian readers will forgive this intrusion in your affairs, but we all in our own way have a stake in this issue, and we felt compelled to put an additional argument against this dreadful project on the table. We hope you’ll find our comments helpful as you debate this issue.

Sincerely,

Bruce and Connie Fraser
Middletown,
Connecticut

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

World News