NEPA Went Silent on Jack’s Hill After Two Landslides in One Year

Jack’s Hill, a St Andrew community built on a steep, geologically unstable slope, saw two separate landslide incidents within months of each other: construction on one development triggered the collapse of Tavistock Terrace, and a second project triggered a landslide that blocked another section of road, according to Gleaner reporting. In the aftermath, the National Environment and Planning Agency did not respond to repeated Gleaner requests for information about how either development had been permitted.

The Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation was similarly unresponsive to questions about the terms and conditions attached to any permits granted, or whether the island’s hillside development policy and the Town and Country Planning Development Order had actually been followed. That silence matters because Jack’s Hill is not an obscure or newly identified risk. Geologist Ricketts, who authored the landslide susceptibility maps for the area, described it as highly prone to landslides historically, undermined by colluvium, loose, old landslide deposits with very low shear strength once exposed to heavy rainfall, distinct from the more compact alluvium found on coastal plains.

The mechanism is well understood, not a mystery regulators discovered after the fact. Once construction modifies slopes built on colluvium, the material tends to fail, and excessive rainfall accelerates that failure. That is precisely the geology a genuine review of a building permit application on that hillside would need to weigh, which makes the agencies’ silence about what was actually approved, and under what conditions, the real story here, not just the landslides themselves.

For anyone considering hillside property in Kingston’s expanding development corridor, the practical lesson is that a location’s geology deserves at least as much scrutiny as its view, and that a building permit having been granted is not, on its own, confirmation that the site was properly assessed for landslide risk.

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