Diggers in the Water: CHEC’s Mammee Bay Development Gets Under Way Despite Continued Environmental Objections

Briefing

• China Harbour Engineering Company begins site works at Mammee Bay, St Ann.
• JaBBEM and community groups filed objections with NEPA; hearings ongoing.
• Development covers over 100 hectares in a sensitive coastal watershed zone.
• Critics cite inadequate environmental impact assessment for the site’s marine impacts.
• CHEC is Jamaica’s most active infrastructure contractor; the project received government support.

The machines arrived in Mammee Bay quietly. There were no ribbon-cuttings, no ministerial speeches, no press conference at the site. Early in 2025, heavy earthmoving equipment began preparatory works at the Mammee Bay site in St Ann, the first physical evidence that the China Harbour Engineering Company’s long-contested coastal development was moving from the planning stage to the construction phase. For the residents of the surrounding communities and the environmental advocates who had been fighting the project for several years, the sight of disturbed earth and cleared vegetation at the site carried a significance that no planning document had quite made concrete.

CHEC — the state-owned Chinese construction conglomerate that built the North-South Highway and has been Jamaica’s most prominent infrastructure contractor for more than a decade — had secured planning approval for a substantial mixed-use development at Mammee Bay, covering more than 100 hectares in a coastal watershed area between Ocho Rios and Runaway Bay. The project, which involved hotel, residential, and commercial components, had attracted sustained criticism from JaBBEM (Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement) and allied environmental groups who argued that the environmental impact assessment conducted for the site was inadequate, that community consultation had been superficial, and that the development’s scale and location posed unacceptable risks to the coastal ecosystem.

What the Objections Said

JaBBEM’s objections, submitted formally to the National Environment and Planning Agency and made public in a series of press releases and social media communications, focused on several specific concerns. The EIA, they argued, had not adequately assessed the impact of large-scale earthworks on the sediment and runoff entering the adjacent marine environment — a particular concern given that the reef systems immediately offshore at Mammee Bay are among the more intact remaining on Jamaica’s north coast. They also argued that the development’s footprint in the coastal watershed would compromise the natural drainage function of the area, increasing flood risk in surrounding communities during extreme rainfall events.

A further concern related to beach access. The Mammee Bay area includes a stretch of coastline that had historically functioned as an informal public beach, used by residents of surrounding communities for recreational swimming and by fisherfolk for boat access. The development plans showed this area being incorporated into the hotel compound, with access subject to the development’s own security and management arrangements. For advocates who had spent years fighting the broader beach access battle, the Mammee Bay project represented a live instance of the problem they were campaigning against: a new development that would effectively privatise a stretch of coast that had previously been accessible to the public.

The Government’s Position

The development received government support, and CHEC’s role as a major infrastructure partner of the Jamaican state created a political context in which the project’s approvals process moved forward despite the objections. NEPA’s formal hearing process on the environmental objections was ongoing when site preparatory works began, a sequence that critics described as prejudging the outcome of a regulatory process that had not yet concluded. The Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology declined to comment specifically on the timing of the earthworks relative to the outstanding NEPA hearing, other than to say that the developer held a valid permit for site preparation activities.

The Mammee Bay development illustrated a tension at the heart of Jamaica’s coastal planning system that the beach access policy debate had not yet resolved: the question of how to balance the government’s genuine interest in attracting large-scale investment with the equally genuine interest of communities and environmental advocates in ensuring that that investment does not degrade the coastal environment on which much of the island’s long-term economic future depends. CHEC’s project was moving forward. The legal challenges were continuing. The outcome of that collision would define the future of one of the last significant undeveloped stretches of the Jamaican north coast.

Related: Latest Jamaica News | Property Market Analysis

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomes Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com