🗑️ CIG and Dart continue negotiations over failed waste management deal

The Cayman Islands Government (CIG) and Dart are still in discussions over the failed dump deal, and it may be a while before the ministry can initiate a new procurement process to find a suitable private sector solution for Cayman’s garbage crisis. The CIG has already spent nearly $16.5 million on consultants, insurance, and project management during the ReGen negotiations. Sustainability Minister Kathy Ebanks-Wilks has stated that intense talks over the agreement are ongoing, despite her announcement in July that the government was withdrawing from it. 📑

The sustainability ministry is expected to retain the waste-management problem in its portfolio once the government has cleared the legal, financial, and other hurdles to extricate itself from what the minister and her predecessor, Wayne Panton, have both said was a bad deal. The new procurement exercise, which is now unlikely to start before parliament is prorogued ahead of the 2025 General Election, will be handled by the ministry. The total cost to the public purse from the failed $1 billion deal remains unknown. According to the ministry’s response to a freedom of information request, $10 million alone had been spent on legal fees by the time the talks collapsed. 🗂️

Other costs associated with the project include the capping and remediation of a large part of the original landfill, which benefitted Dart as the surrounding land owner. Since the government began the original procurement exercise around seven years ago, there have been a number of land deals associated with the project. The Dart-led consortium secured the bid to build a new waste management and recycling centre, including the waste-to-energy plant, in 2017. The government remains committed to finding a solution and will move towards the procurement process as soon as the talks to end the deal are over. 💼