News item | 12-05-2023 | 16:52
The cabinet intends to make a maximum of €19 million available to the Public Entity of Sint Eustatius to stabilize the cliff on the harbor side of the island. This intention has been included in the Spring Memorandum, recently presented to the House of Representatives, and will still have to be ratified by the House of Representatives during the discussion of the Spring Memorandum.
Earlier, the State has already financially assisted the Public Entity to prop up the cliff under Fort Oranje. However, further investigation showed that measures are needed on a much larger part of this cliff on the harbor side of Sint Eustatius.
The Public Entity is responsible for the state and for the maintenance of the cliff, but because of the size of the project, also in a financial sense, it officially asked the national government for help at the beginning of this year. The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is prepared to support St. Eustatius in this. Decisions on such requests always take place in the spring.
To ensure that these and the measures taken earlier have a long-term effect, additional measures are needed to make the project more sustainable. This mainly concerns the removal of stray cattle and the realization of a maintenance plan. This is necessary to prevent future problems. The State Secretary for Kingdom Relations and Digitization, Alexandra van Huffelen, has therefore informed the Executive Council of Sint Eustatius by letter that she will make agreements about these measures before the resources are definitively allocated.