St. John Residents Respond to Proposed Land and Water Use Plan

In the coming decades, where should development take place to meet the territory’s needs for housing, economic expansion, and upgrades in the infrastructure? Will cultural and environmental resources be protected? Who will decide, and how?

The blueprint for answering these questions is the Virgin Islands Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan which is now in its drafting phase. The plan is expected to be submitted to the V.I. Legislature by August, according to Jean-Pierre “JP” Oriol, commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources.

Previous efforts to create a Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan in the 1990s and again in 2004 stalled because of competing interests, Oriol said. The current draft is not a regulatory document – containing details of changes in the zoning code, for example – but more of a visioning document. Changes in regulations will follow in the next two or three years once the Comp Plan is adopted.