Although Beal Aerospace has announced that it has scrapped its development plans for St. Croix in the wake of a recent court decision, the St. Croix Environmental Association intends to press ahead with a related lawsuit.
SEA and the Virgin Islands Conservation Society filed a lawsuit in Territorial Court in early November to stop, among other things, the V.I. government from exchanging land with Beal at Camp Arawak on Great Pond Bay. The land swap agreement included language that would allow Beal to rezone waterfront acreage on the bay to industrial use.
Despite the fact that Territorial Court Judge Alphonso Andrews blocked the land swap on Dec. 15, Yvonne Petersen, SEA’s executive director, said that his ruling didn’t touch on the zoning issue.
Since Beal’s announcement last Friday that it was abandoning plans to build a $57 million rocket assembly and world headquarters facility on Great Pond Bay, the company has been silent. Calls to company officials have not been returned.
In his State of the Territory address Monday night, Gov. Charles Turnbull said he spoke to Beal officials on Sunday about reconsidering their decision. As of Monday, he said the company’s answer was no.
Still, it is unclear whether Beal will purchase some 254 acres on Great Pond Bay it has held an option on for the past year. A portion of that acreage was what would have been rezoned in the land exchange agreement.
"We are still holding fast that the rezoning was illegal," Petersen said. "We’ve been trying to check out if they’ve decided to go on with the option."
SEA attorneys argue that because the zoning variance within the land exchange agreement is more than just a variance, it should have been subject to public hearings. Since hearings didn’t take place, SEA contends the land swap constitutes a special or private law in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and a section of the Revised Organic Act.
Beal’s pullout, meanwhile, has supporters pointing fingers at SEA and Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen, who Andrews ruled in favor of in his decision to block the Camp Arawak land swap. Sen. Allie Allison Petrus said the economic impact of Beal’s departure would hurt the territory in the future.
"For those people who said no to Beal, then what?" asked Petrus. "I don’t know how serious Beal would look at reconsidering."
But Hansen was unrepentant. She challenged Beal to appeal Andrews’ decision in a higher court. She also blasted Beal for the company’s "take-it-or-leave-it" stance regarding Great Pond Bay.
"Beal needs to go where the people say: That’s the industrial site," she said. "If Beal was serious, if he wanted to help the . . . people of the Virgin Islands, he’d still be here."
