Virgin Islanders Urged to Rethink Coastal Development

Gregory Guannel, director of the Caribbean Green Technology Center of the University of the Virgin Islands, said Wednesday that human activity is putting the territory’s coastlines under a lot of pressure.

Lecturing at the UVI Medical Simulation Center Dining Hall on St. Croix, he said Virgin Islanders must “think differently” about building along the coasts. He showed photos of a house once 100 feet from the shore and now about to fall into the sea.

He also showed photographs documenting the changing shorelines that resulted from the building of the Hovensa refinery on St. Croix and the extension of the airport runway on St. Thomas.

Rónadh Cox, professor of geology and mineralogy at Williams College, pointed out that other factors, such as hydrology (guts), gravity, sea level rise and wave action, also impacted shorelines.