Dear Source,
The St. Croix Environmental Association does not endorse the proposed 2 cents per pound "environmental excise tax" passed by the 25th Legislature. We would also like to register our concerns about three specific issues related to the tax.
– The tax does not effectively deal with those industries that place a greater burden on the solid waste stream. Rather, it is a "one-size-fits-all" tax that ignores the realities of a need for a comprehensive approach to waste management. If the government cannot develop a tax that adequately addresses this problem, how can it develop a working plan?
– There is no enabling legislation accompanying the tax measure to create a special environmental fund. The money collected will be placed in the General Fund. This is hardly a targeted measure to deal with environmental problems.
– The tax does not address the core threat to infrastructure in the Virgin Islands — namely, inept and potentially corrupt procurement of goods and services to repair or replace infrastructure.
Neither the St. Croix Environmental Association nor anyone else was allowed to comment on the tax before its ratification by the Senate. Until the Senate ceases its closed-door negotiation strategies, we believe these problems will persist.
For further information, call SEA at 773-1989.
Bill Turner, executive director
St. Croix Environmental Association

Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.

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Dear Source,
The St. Croix Environmental Association does not endorse the proposed 2 cents per pound "environmental excise tax" passed by the 25th Legislature. We would also like to register our concerns about three specific issues related to the tax.
– The tax does not effectively deal with those industries that place a greater burden on the solid waste stream. Rather, it is a "one-size-fits-all" tax that ignores the realities of a need for a comprehensive approach to waste management. If the government cannot develop a tax that adequately addresses this problem, how can it develop a working plan?
– There is no enabling legislation accompanying the tax measure to create a special environmental fund. The money collected will be placed in the General Fund. This is hardly a targeted measure to deal with environmental problems.
– The tax does not address the core threat to infrastructure in the Virgin Islands — namely, inept and potentially corrupt procurement of goods and services to repair or replace infrastructure.
Neither the St. Croix Environmental Association nor anyone else was allowed to comment on the tax before its ratification by the Senate. Until the Senate ceases its closed-door negotiation strategies, we believe these problems will persist.
For further information, call SEA at 773-1989.
Bill Turner, executive director
St. Croix Environmental Association

Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.

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June 25, 2003 – This month's Dada Wine Down is set for Friday at the Renaissance Grand Beach Resort. It will feature the work of four artists — Savannah Garrison, "Dingo," Cody Wombold and Anita de la Cruz — and wines of Chile and California's Sonoma region.
The event takes place from 5 to 9 p.m. There will be complimentary hors d'oeuvres, a cash bar and door prizes. Dinner also will be available.
There's a $10 fee for the wine tasting and seminar, which will be ongoing throughout the evening. The tastings, presented by Premier Wine and Spirits, will be of two California wines, Clos du Bois chardonnay and merlot; and of two Chilean offerings, Veramonte cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc.
Savannah Garrison moved to St. Thomas in September 2001 to live with her family after receiving her bachelor of fine arts in ceramics from the University of Mississippi. Her current sculptural work echoes the landscapes of the island. She is a studio assistant at Kilnworks Pottery and will be a counselor in the Virgin Valley Learning Center summer program.
"Dingo," known for his greeting cards, has been creating island scenes for the last decade on St. Thomas. Working with colored pencils, he is a familiar figure on the island, often seen drawing in the alleys and on the waterfront.
Cody Wombold is a self-taught artist who grew up in Las Vegas and has lived for the last six years on St. Thomas, where he owns and operates the Camille Pissarro Gallery. He works in many mediums, and his palette ranges from stark black and white to very vibrant bright colors.
Anita de la Cruz came to the territory from Texas in the late 1990s. An art educator as well as a fine artist, she works in various mediums including batik.

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June 25, 2003 – There's a relatively new face at Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center. Certified nurse midwife Suzanne Wertman Quetel has replaced Fran Jacobs, who left in October 2002.
Administrator Erica McDonald announced this week that Wertman Quetel has been on the job since February. She is one of two nurse midwives on the center's Women's Health Division staff; the other is Veronica O'Brien Powell.
Quetel has 16 years of experience in women's health care and has held her nurse midwife certificate for five years.
"We have someone who brings a different flavor to our stew," McDonald said.
Quetel holds bachelor's and master's degrees in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College. She is a member of the American College of Nurse Midwives.
She has experience working with teens, family planning, pregnant women and their families, breast-feeding moms and women reaching menopause. She previously worked in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
McDonald said Quetel is holding five-week classes for pregnant women and that parenting classes are in the works.
Quetel lived on St. Thomas in the early 1990s. She and her husband, William Quetel, returned to the territory in November 2002.

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June 25, 2003 – "Wicked" is what St. Croix businessman Noel Loftus called the two-cents-a-pound "environmental fee" passed last week by the Legislature.
"We're talking about bureaucracy, ineptness and no public hearings," Loftus said.
The Senate approved the measure — which the governor had proposed as a "tax" but the lawmakers chose to rename a "fee" — as a way to generate revenue for the cash-strapped territory.
Whipping off figures, Loftus said he calculates that the tax would increase the cost of groceries for a family by about $500 to $600 a year. "Milk will go up by 16 cents a gallon," he said.
The St. Croix Environmental Association's executive director, Bill Turner, called the measure a tax against the poor. "The person who is buying macaroni and cheese is really getting pounded," he said.
While grocery costs will rise because businesses paying the tax will pass the expense on to customers, the construction industry will take a bigger hit.
Cement, steel, lumber and sheetrock are exempt from the tax, but many other materials go into building a home. However, Colette Monroe, chief researcher for Sen. Louis P. Hill, said that sand and gravel are also exempt, although they do not appear on the list of exemptions in the bill.
Loftus estimates the tax would add $40,000 to $50,000 to the price of a home on St. Croix, which has the lowest building costs in the territory. And he predicted that his business, the Floor Specialist, will close within a year because people will shop for their floor tiles in Puerto Rico or on the mainland to avoid the tax.
He also predicted that two out of the three concrete companies on St. Croix will be out of business by year's end if Gov. Charles W. Turnbull allows the bill to become law.
Sen. Almando "Rocky" Liburd, who voted against the bill, said it was not well thought out and would hurt the very people the senators are supposed to protect. He said if there is a move to repeal the tax, he will join in.
Turner is upset that while the measure is pegged as an "environmental tax," the money will go into the General Fund. The bill calls for the money to go to the V.I. Waste Management Authority once such an entity is established. Turnbull has been trying from early in his first term to get the Legislature to approve the creation of such an authority.
Turner said thinks it's more like if a Waste Management Authority is established than when. And should the authority come into existence, he said, it would only be another layer of bureaucracy.
He said the "environmental fee" does not distinguish between enterprises that add to the waste stream and those that do not. He said that lumber, which will be heavily taxed because of its weight, will last for 30 years when used in a house. However, candy bars, which will have only a minuscule tax, have wrappers that end up almost immediately in the landfill.
Monroe said that the tax is fair to all. "There's no other option, and this is a fair deal," she said. She said if residents had to pay tipping fees to get rid of their waste, it would cost them more. And this way, tourists will pay part of the cost since they buy things like candy bars.
She said the tax on potato chips will run $.0001 — that's one-hundredth of a cent — per bag.
According to the bill, the Internal Revenue Bureau will collect the tax.
"I assume it will be a small line on an excise form or a line on somebody's form," Monroe said.
Loftus said that shippers will be burdened because containers often come packed with both business and personal goods. They will then have to sort the goods so they know which ones must be taxed.
The bill has not yet been sent to Government House for Gov. Charles Turnbull's action. He has 10 days after it arrives to approve it, veto it in whole or in part, or let it become law without his signature.

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June 25, 2003 – Coast Guard officials in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have temporarily detained a number of small foreign cargo ships in recent weeks after finding that their captains did not have proper licenses.
Lt. John Reinert, the Coast Guard commanding officer on St. Thomas, said on Tuesday that his unit and others were notified by Miami headquarters three weeks ago that some ships' masters were operating in U.S. waters with mariner licenses valid only for their local waters.
Since then, he said, half a dozen vessels have been detained in V.I. waters and four more have been stopped by Coast Guard officials off Puerto Rico.
"These are small cargo vessels," Reinert said. "I believe the tonnage regulation is under 300 gross tons … They are foreign-flagged vessels carrying anything and everything. I kind of describe them as the UPS of the vessel fleet."
The detentions have been brief, he said, with all of the freighters released after Coast Guard officials contacted their owners or home offices to say that if the freighters return to U.S. waters, they must be under the command of a master holding proper credentials.
"Under the International Maritime Organization, certain countries can give valid licenses that are recognized throughout the organization, the United States being one," Reinert said. To be allowed to issue such licenses, he said, "countries have to meet certain requirements that are across-the-board equal for safety at sea for these mariners and their vessels."
The problem, he said, is "that there are certain countries that are not supposed to be giving licenses to mariners for international voyages. They can give licenses for their own waters, but for international voyages they have to meet the requirement of the IMO."
Reinert did not say where the vessels that have been detained are registered.
He said officials in Miami, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have been advised to monitor Caribbean cargo vessels and their operators for compliance. The Coast Guard will continue to check the licenses of masters coming into V.I. waters from foreign ports, he said.

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June 25, 2003 – Seaborne Airlines has expanded inter-island service again effective this week, adding two round-trip flights a day between St. Croix and St. Thomas.
That brings the daily schedule between Christiansted and Charlotte Amalie to "17 flights each way every day except Fridays, when there will be 19," Omer ErSelcuk, Seaborne's chief marketing officer, said. Additionally, he noted, there are two round-trip flights between Frederiksted and Charlotte Amalie each day.
That adds up to 135 round trips per week between the two islands, 14 of them serving Frederiksted, where service was inaugurated in mid-May.
The additional flights "will help us better address supply with demand," ErSelcuk said.
Meantime, in order to carry out annual maintenance inspections of all of the seaplanes, Seaborne has temporarily suspended a few flights, he said. These "were the ones we normally added for Friday, Saturday and Sunday — and sometimes when demand warranted it during the week," he said. "When we add back flights after the completion of the maintenance checks, average flights per week will increase to 300-plus," or more than 150 round trips.
"Because June is maintenance month at Seaborne, we individually remove aircraft from service for a longer period of time than normal to conduct in-depth inspections at our Christiansted maintenance facility," ErSelcuk said. "As each aircraft is taken out of rotation, we have less flexibility to add to our normal schedule when demand warrants it on busy days like Friday. We are aware that over the past few weeks, some of our customers are not getting the flights they want, and we apologize for the inconvenience."
The annual inspections should be completed "by early to mid July, allowing us to add flights on busy Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons," he said. "When these flights are added, including Frederiksted, we'll have more flights between St. Thomas and St. Croix than ever before."
What's more, he said, Seaborne will "get additional capacity early this fall when we expect to add new aircraft" to the fleet.
According to ErSelcuk, Seaborne has been pleased by the response so far to the service connecting Frederiksted with St. Thomas. "Loads have averaged around 70 percent," he said. And, he added, when the airline adds service in the fall, it will "most likely" include a third, mid-day trip to and from Frederiksted.
Seaborne, one of the world's largest seaplane airlines, carries more than 100,000 passengers annually. Locally owned and operated, the company employs more than 100 persons in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and offers more than 50 flights a day serving Christiansted, Frederiksted, Charlotte Amalie and Old San Juan.
To see flight schedules and to book reservations online, visit the Seaborne Airlines Web site. Reservations also may be made by calling toll-free (888) FLY-TOUR / 359-8687, or locally by calling 773-6442 between 6 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday or between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday.

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June 25, 2003 – For the second time in nine months, Tourism Commissioner Pamela Richards has failed to attend a major Caribbean tourism industry conference where she was scheduled to be a participant.
The first was last October's annual Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association conference.
The second was the Caribbean Hotel Association's annual Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference this week in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic.
Responding to an article in The V.I. Daily News about her absence at Punta Cana, where she was scheduled to participate Tuesday in a panel discussion on airlift, Richards called the "Topp Talk" show on WVWI Radio on Wednesday morning to defend her absence.
Richards said she had not been able to get her travel approved by Government House. All travel must be approved by the governor. She said she stayed in her office until 6:30 p.m. Friday awaiting an answer to the travel request and that she told conference officials that if they did not hear from her, she would not be attending the meeting, which. ran from Sunday through Wednesday.
However, travel was approved for a member of her staff. According to the published report, Rick Carrington, the Tourism Department St. Croix bureau manager, attended the conference.
Richards acknowledged on the talk show that a Tourism representative was at Punta Cana. She did not explain how his travel had been approved, while hers was not. "I must follow the rules I work under," she said, adding: "I will get my report when my Tourism official returns."
Downplaying her absence, Richard said on the broadcast that "my participation wouldn't make or break the conference. It wasn't a keynote speech; I was to participate on a panel." She also said her staff member "wasn't invited to speak on the panel."
Later, in a telephone interview with the Source, Richards said she doesn't know why her travel was not approved and her employee's was. "That's not something I can answer," she said. "I don't sign them" — the travel vouchers. She had no comment as to whether Gov. Charles W. Turnbull considered the conference to be important.
She did say that she was "surprised the issue of cruise lines should have been so dominant at a hotel conference." She said she had been asked to talk about airlift, and that she had no knowledge the cruise lines would have representatives there.
The Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference program posted on the CHA CHIC Web site lists among four workshops on the schedule:
– "By Land or By Sea (or both!)," described as a discussion of what the cruise industry brings to and takes away from land-based tourism in the Caribbean. The schedule notes that this discussion "will be the basis for developing the CHA Cruise Policy."
The other CHIC workshops dealt with:
– Capitalizing on the trend toward direct-to-consumer online marketing and sales.
– Developing a mandate of priority the tourism sector would like to see applied by the public sector.
– Best practices of resource development, including securing public-sector support, attracting foreign and local investment opportunities and improving product branding.
Referring to another V.I. Daily News report, about references at the conference to the pullout of cruise lines from St. Croix last year, Richards said she doesn't know why nobody at the meeting remarked on the recent visit of a ship to St. Croix. "We just had a Royal Caribbean ship visit, and no one commented on that," she said. Asked about allegations in the published report about crime on St. Croix, she said she had not read the newspaper.
Richards said she is planning to attend the annual Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association conference in the fall. In preparation for that gathering, she said, she and her staff will meet "within the next week" with officials of the Port Authority (whose board she chairs by virtue of being Tourism commissioner), The West Indian Co. and the Economic Development Authority. She said that on Tuesday she was attending VIPA meetings.
Richards missed the 2002 F-CCA conference last October in Cancun. There, too, she was to be a panel speaker. She opted to return home from a Tampa meeting she had attended prior to the conference because of the approach toward the territory of Tropical Storm Lili. (See "Richards says Lili led her to skip conference".)
At that week-long F-CCA conference, Richards was scheduled to participate in a panel discussing cruise ship "conversion" programs, which refers to turning cruise visitors into returning overnight hotel guests. She said at the time that the panel could go on without her since there were five other members.
Wednesday' published reports about the CHIC said it was damning of St. Croix. Cruise ship officials — particularly Giora Israel, a Carnival Corp. vice president — "reminded a room full of Caribbean hoteliers that Carnival pulled its ships out of St. Croix more than a year ago because of continued criminal attacks on passengers and crew," according to one account.
In April 2002, Carnival announced it was canceling 52 calls at St. Croix by the Triumph and the Victory for the 2002-03 season. Two other cruise lines followed suit. (See "Of shoes and ships and crime and punishment".) In May 2002, Norwegian Cruise Line announced it was dropping eight scheduled calls to the island. A month later came word that Holland America had canceled plans for its new ship, the Zuiderdam, to call 43 times at St. Croix, from November 2002 through December of 2003. Carnival cited crime as a reason; all three cited lack of demand.
For the 2000-01 season — as calculated from October through June — St. Croix recorded 154 cruise ship calls. For the 2001-02 season, the number slid to about 103, mainly because Holland America dropped the island from its itinerary.
This past winter season, Celebrity Cruises' Constellation was the only major cruise ship scheduled to call regularly at St. Croix, with 21 visits scheduled. However, Celebrity announced last December that it was reducing the visits to 17, making the ship's last call on March 9 instead of continuing into April. Celebrity is owned by Royal Caribbean Cruises.
For the 2003 summer season, May 1 through Sept. 30, no ships are scheduled to call regularly at St. Croix. There has been no announcement of whether the Constellation will return for the winter. So far, repeated talks involving cruise lines, the St. Croix hospitality industry and V.I. government officials have failed to entice any ships back.

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June 25, 2003 – "Wicked" is what St. Croix businessman Noel Loftus called the two-cents-a-pound "environmental fee" passed last week by the Legislature.
"We're talking about bureaucracy, ineptness and no public hearings," Loftus said.
The Senate approved the measure — which the governor had proposed as a "tax" but the lawmakers chose to rename a "fee" — as a way to generate revenue for the cash-strapped territory.
Whipping off figures, Loftus said he calculates that the tax would increase the cost of groceries for a family by about $500 to $600 a year. "Milk will go up by 16 cents a gallon," he said.
The St. Croix Environmental Association's executive director, Bill Turner, called the measure a tax against the poor. "The person who is buying macaroni and cheese is really getting pounded," he said.
While grocery costs will rise because businesses paying the tax will pass the expense on to customers, the construction industry will take a bigger hit.
Cement, steel, lumber and sheetrock are exempt from the tax, but many other materials go into building a home. However, Colette Monroe, chief researcher for Sen. Louis P. Hill, said that sand and gravel are also exempt, although they do not appear on the list of exemptions in the bill.
Loftus estimates the tax would add $40,000 to $50,000 to the price of a home on St. Croix, which has the lowest building costs in the territory. And he predicted that his business, the Floor Specialist, will close within a year because people will shop for their floor tiles in Puerto Rico or on the mainland to avoid the tax.
He also predicted that two out of the three concrete companies on St. Croix will be out of business by year's end if Gov. Charles W. Turnbull allows the bill to become law.
Sen. Almando "Rocky" Liburd, who voted against the bill, said it was not well thought out and would hurt the very people the senators are supposed to protect. He said if there is a move to repeal the tax, he will join in.
Turner is upset that while the measure is pegged as an "environmental tax," the money will go into the General Fund. The bill calls for the money to go to the V.I. Waste Management Authority once such an entity is established. Turnbull has been trying from early in his first term to get the Legislature to approve the creation of such an authority.
Turner said thinks it's more like if a Waste Management Authority is established than when. And should the authority come into existence, he said, it would only be another layer of bureaucracy.
He said the "environmental fee" does not distinguish between enterprises that add to the waste stream and those that do not. He said that lumber, which will be heavily taxed because of its weight, will last for 30 years when used in a house. However, candy bars, which will have only a minuscule tax, have wrappers that end up almost immediately in the landfill.
Monroe said that the tax is fair to all. "There's no other option, and this is a fair deal," she said. She said if residents had to pay tipping fees to get rid of their waste, it would cost them more. And this way, tourists will pay part of the cost since they buy things like candy bars.
She said the tax on potato chips will run $.0001 — that's one-hundredth of a cent — per bag.
According to the bill, the Internal Revenue Bureau will collect the tax.
"I assume it will be a small line on an excise form or a line on somebody's form," Monroe said.
Loftus said that shippers will be burdened because containers often come packed with both business and personal goods. They will then have to sort the goods so they know which ones must be taxed.
The bill has not yet been sent to Government House for Gov. Charles Turnbull's action. He has 10 days after it arrives to approve it, veto it in whole or in part, or let it become law without his signature.

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June 25, 2003 – Coast Guard officials in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have temporarily detained a number of small foreign cargo ships in recent weeks after finding that their captains did not have proper licenses.
Lt. John Reinert, the Coast Guard commanding officer on St. Thomas, said on Tuesday that his unit and others were notified by Miami headquarters three weeks ago that some ships' masters were operating in U.S. waters with mariner licenses valid only for their local waters.
Since then, he said, half a dozen vessels have been detained in V.I. waters and four more have been stopped by Coast Guard officials off Puerto Rico.
"These are small cargo vessels," Reinert said. "I believe the tonnage regulation is under 300 gross tons … They are foreign-flagged vessels carrying anything and everything. I kind of describe them as the UPS of the vessel fleet."
The detentions have been brief, he said, with all of the freighters released after Coast Guard officials contacted their owners or home offices to say that if the freighters return to U.S. waters, they must be under the command of a master holding proper credentials.
"Under the International Maritime Organization, certain countries can give valid licenses that are recognized throughout the organization, the United States being one," Reinert said. To be allowed to issue such licenses, he said, "countries have to meet certain requirements that are across-the-board equal for safety at sea for these mariners and their vessels."
The problem, he said, is "that there are certain countries that are not supposed to be giving licenses to mariners for international voyages. They can give licenses for their own waters, but for international voyages they have to meet the requirement of the IMO."
Reinert did not say where the vessels that have been detained are registered.
He said officials in Miami, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have been advised to monitor Caribbean cargo vessels and their operators for compliance. The Coast Guard will continue to check the licenses of masters coming into V.I. waters from foreign ports, he said.

Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.