Saturday February 26 6:23 PM ET
By MICHELLE FAUL Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Taking his conservation battle to the Bahamas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a massive
resort project financed by a California firm would damage environmental and cultural treasures in a way that would
not be allowed on the U.S. mainland.
At stake are treasures ranging from two prehistoric Lucayan Indian villages to the remains of a conch shell-walled
slave plantation and three indigenous bird species, the activist lawyer said while in New Providence island on
a three-day visit ending Saturday.
``This place will bring tears to your eyes,'' Kennedy told The Associated Press by telephone after touring the
plantation. ``It's the Auschwitz of the Bahamian-African North American people ... an architectural feat by slave
labor.''
The financial backers of the $400-million Clifton Cay project, San Francisco-based Fremont Realty Capital, refused
to comment on the controversy. The firm is owned by California's powerful Bechtel family.
The company wants to build a luxury gated community on 600 acres on the west end of New Providence, which encompasses
80 square miles and is the main island of the 700 that make up the Bahamas.
A small grassroots movement, which wants to replace the resort project with a national park, reached out to Kennedy's
Natural Resources Defense Council, a private research group based in White Plains, N.Y.
Together, they developed advertisements against the project, but the government-owned broadcast stations refused
to air them.
On Friday, Kennedy attended a meeting with a couple hundred Bahamians in Nassau, the capital. People there complained
they would lose access to popular Jaws Beach, and that the 500 feet the developers said would be left open for
locals was not enough.
``There are already too many walls shutting off people from beaches and this is the last large stretch of beach
not developed,'' the Rev. C.B. Moss said after the meeting.
Bahamian Premier Hubert Ingraham, who last year promoted the project as a way to create jobs, must decide whether
to go ahead with Clifton Cay. The project has been held up because the ownership of some of the land is under dispute.
Kennedy said the developer's plan for residents to anchor their boats in canals outside their homes could hurt
the economy.
``It's a biological gem with these unique reef systems that draw people from all over the world and has an $18
million scuba industry absolutely dependent on reefs surrounding this cay that would be destroyed by the Clifton
Cay project,'' he said in a telephone interview.
Kennedy said it was illegal to build that type of canal in the United States because they ``literally would suck
the sand off reef systems.''
In addition, he charged the project would destroy wetlands that are home to the hawk and green sea turtles and
could make three species of endangered birds extinct - the Bahamian yellow-throated warbler, wood star and mocking
bird.
The Bahamian government commissioned a Miami-based firm to review the developer's environmental impact assessment,
and in a crushing report, Law Engineering and Environmental Services Inc. concluded the project could draw away
all the sand from Jaws Beach.
It said the developer's assessment showed ``numerous inconsistencies,'' made recommendations that ``cannot be supported
by rigorous scientific data'' and ``fundamentally incorrect'' assumptions.