On Tuesday, the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, through the Coastal Zone Management Committee, approved applications to demolish and rebuild the WTJX radio station on St. Thomas and to place temporary sargassum containments at the Sapphire Beach Resort and Marina and at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Thomas.
The CZM board met with representatives from the action items to hear testimony and voted unanimously to approve all matters. First, the demolition and rebuilding of the WTJX radio station was approved. The project will demolish all existing buildings including the roof structure and interior and exterior walls. This will also include the complete demolition of the existing satellite antenna equipment, its foundations and slabs.
Project architect Jerry Traino showed attendees the demolition and zoning plans for the project.
“The new building will now be situated towards the center of the site with the parking to the north of that where we can provide same level access to the main level of the building from the parking. Currently the parking is at a much lower level,” said Traino.
According to Traino, the broadcasting studio will be located on the primary level of the three-story building. The storage unit, a garage, and the large studio will be along the west side, while the broadcasting and production suite will be towards the south side. A two-story administrative suite will be placed along the northeast side of the building. There will also be a cistern and wastewater treatment plant located on-site.
The CZM staff found that the demolition of the WTJX radio station is consistent with its program, rules and regulations of the VI government, will result in minimal damage to the environment, and will serve the public good. Thus they approved the measure.
The board also approved the installation of geotubes and sargassum booms at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Thomas. Eleven geotubes will be filled with sand and placed 15 feet apart offshore to prevent sand loss and 750 feet of removable sargassum diversion boom will also be installed offshore to prevent sargassum from reaching the coast.
“We’re trying to preserve the beach at Ritz Carlton ever since the 2017 hurricanes,” said Amy Dempsey, president of Bioimpact, Inc. “We have climate change, we have sea level rise, and storms are getting worse and worse as we all know. Losing coastlines is going to be a problem, especially for us here in the Virgin Islands, and on top of that, we’ve also got the issue of these massive amounts of sargassum coming in and impacting our beaches. And this sargassum, also, the cleaning up of it or not even cleaning up, it ends up causing us to lose more sand.”
According to Dempsey, The Ritz-Carlton, St. Thomas has been doing a trial with sargassum barriers and geotubes for a couple of years. Cara Golding, general manager at The Ritz-Carlton Club, said installing the sargassum barriers has reduced sargassum cleanup costs by $600,000.
“We’ve had days where we’ve had 17 dumpsters full that have been removed from the beach,” said Golding.
The board approved the measure, though some members found the installation of geotubes a bit concerning regarding the creation of rip currents.
“The geotubes, you pump sand into them,” said Dempsey. “And in the same case, if you needed to take them out, it’s a process of sucking the flurry of sand back out. So they could look at, like, decreasing the height of them.”
Board members additionally approved Sapphire Beach’s request for sargassum boom management and maintenance dredging of the marina area. Their request was for a temporary 700-foot sargassum boom and for 1,200 cubic yards of cobble material near the docks to be dredged.
“The big issue here is that the sargassum gets washed straight into this marina,” said Dempsey.
“It’s really horrible. In the worst instance that I observed from historical photos from 2018 it filled the entire marina,” said Meg Novacek, representative of Sapphire Beach Resort and Marina. “There’s no way to get it out. The staff was using pool skimmers which was just ludicrous. It really had no chance of getting it out. And if you don’t get it out of the water within about three days it sinks, at which point it creates hydrogen sulfide gasses and acid. It corrodes almost all of the metal on all of those vessels in that marina,” said Meg Novacek.
Dempsey and Novacek added that maintenance dredging will allow the utilization of unused slips that have been filled in with cobbles and the widening of the marina entrance.
Lastly, the board approved a request from STT Marine Holdings (Oasis Cove Marina) for an above-ground fuel storage area, a new cistern, the removal of an existing above-ground abandoned cistern, an office buildout, and electrical and plumbing updates.
Three board members, Winston Adams, Jawanza Hilaire, and Karl Percell, were present and unanimously voted on all matters.
