In addition to VIPA’s parking plan, Steve Black announced plans for a marina at Enighed Pond, above.

While a July 19 town hall meeting mostly centered around plans for the Cruz Bay waterfront, the more than 100 residents in the  ballroom at the Westin Resort and Villas also heard about future plans for the Enighed Pond area.

Robert deJongh of The deJongh Group architecture firm was contracted by the V.I. Port Authority to create a plan for the Cruz Bay Creek area and Customs  parking lot. While meeting with a St. John steering committee to lay the groundwork for a plan, deJongh heard residents’ pleas for additional parking in Cruz Bay.

Since VIPA also controls the land at Enighed Pond, which was recently developed to accommodate barge traffic, deJongh devised a plan to create parking in an area near the pond that is currently filled with dredged materials from the pond.

“The parking plan for Enighed Pond was an off-shot of the Cruz Bay waterfront plan,” said deJongh. “We have created a way to bring at least 150 parking spaces to St. John.”

After hearing from officials, residents offered their own ideas during the three-hour town hall meeting, above.

More than 100 residents packed a ballroom at the Westin Resort and Villas on Monday night, July 19, to hear a litany of ideas from officials and share a few of their own about how to transform the Cruz Bay waterfront.

Hosted by Senator at Large Craig Barshinger, St. John Administrator Leona Smith and the St. John Chapter of the St. Thomas/St. John Chamber of Commerce, the meeting centered around various ideas for the improvement and development of the Cruz Bay waterfront from the Loredon Boynes Sr. Ferry Dock to the Cruz Bay Creek area.

“Our waterfront has grown a great deal, but we’re still doing things the way we did 30 years ago,” said Barshinger. “Tonight we will launch the process of figuring out how we want to use the precious resource of our waterfront.”
Panel guests included V.I. National Park Superintendent Mark Hardgrove, Department of Planning and Natural Resources planner Stuart

Snorkeling the pristine waters off Lameshur Bay, roasting marshmallows over a roaring campfire and hiking along a remote rocky shoreline are just a few of the exciting activities more than 80 Virgin Islands children between the ages of 7 and 12 will enjoy this summer.

Twenty children taking part in the first of four free Eco-Camps scheduled for this summer met at the V.I. Environmental Resource Station on Monday, July 12, and got the fun started right away.

“I love roasting marshmallows,” said six-year-old Phoenix Rose. “You use two marshmallows to make one S’more. They’re really good.”

Eleven-year-old Tyreqe Morton got an eyeful while snorkeling, he explained.

“My favorite thing so far was snorkeling,” said Morton. “I saw a big stingray.”

“I like all the pretty fish I saw when we went snorkeling,” said seven-year-old Arianna Poston.

Sponsored by Friends of V.I. National Park, the VIERS Eco-Camps have become popular and much-anticipated three-day, two-night trips for children from across St. John and St. Thomas.

Arianna Poston gets an up-close look at an urchin during the first of four scheduled Eco Camps at VIERS.

The Cinnamon Bay Gut waterfall

With heavy rains lashing St. John all week, the Cinnamon Bay waterfall was forcefully flowing on Wednesday, July 20. While a tropical wave moved over the island on Tuesday, a large area of disturbed weather meant more of the same weather. Skies aren’t expected to clear for several days and the next wave could pass through the territory over the weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.

St. John residents Karin and Bob Schlesinger.

While most Love City residents know St. John is one of the best islands to live on, Islands Magazine has made it official and spent a day with two relocated New Englanders to prove it to the world.

Karin and Bob Schlesinger have called St. John home since moving to the island from Massachusetts 13 years ago. While the two have accomplished quite a bit, including running their own successful photography business Tropical Focus, the Islands Magazine story is their first glossy magazine spread.

Islands Magazine profiled the Schlesingers as part of its  “Best Islands to Live On” spread  in the July/August 2010 issue which features transplanted residents living on each of the three main U.S. Virgin Islands.

“Your Caribbean dream life has never been easier than in the USVI. What are you waiting for?” is the tantalizing headline of the 11-page feature which introduces Corby Parfitt and his family, originally from San Francisco, who moved to St. Thomas to enjoy a “more adventurous life.”

The Friday/Saturday/Sunday, July 16-18, 2010 edition of USA Today reported on the Monday, July12th Coki Beach murder of a 14-year-old cruise ship passenger who arrived on St. Thomas with her family aboard Carnival Victory.

"This week's gang-related shooting of a 14-year-old cruise passenger on tour in St. Thomas — an act the U.S. Virgin Islands' congressional delegate called part of a"plague of violence"  — is the latest in a string of bad news for the tourism-dependent Caribbean," states the article. "Passenger Lizmarie Perez Chapparro was killed on Monday near popular Coki Point Beach as she rode with her family on a "safari bus" that ferries tourists across the island. The girl and her family had arrived in St. Thomas earlier in the day aboard Carnival Victory, which sails out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Another cruise ship passenger sustained a minor injury during the shootout, and a local man also was killed."

Island Roads has completed excavation and demolition of the VINP Visitors center parking lot to prepare the area for paving soon.

Newly paved parking lots at Peace Hill and Jumbie Beach are just the latest completed work of the on-going $4.85 million North Shore Road rehabilitation project, which is in full swing again this month.

With funding from Federal Highway Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants and the V.I. National Park fee program at Trunk Bay, VINP officials are overseeing a complete overhaul of the roadway and parking facilities along the island’s North Shore Road.

The project was awarded to contractor Island Roads in September 2009 and was scheduled to wrap up in September 2010. While the project is proceeding on schedule, officials have obtained additional funds to extend the scope and time frame of the work, explained VINP Superintendent Mark Hardgrove.

“We’ve extended the project one month to October 2010, because we’ve added about $800,000 of work,” said Hardgrove.

With an additional $490,000 from Federal Highway Administration and $325,000 from the NPS fee program, officials have been able to extend the paving project from the originally planned final destination, Hardgrove added.

The Peace Hill parking area, above, was recently paved with funding from the VINP fee program at Trunk Bay.

The U.S. Virgin Islands now has another year to come into compliance with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), thanks to an extension granted by the federal government to all U.S. states and territories.

Several states and territories had already filed for extensions to the July 2010 deadline, prompting the federal government to push back the deadline by one year. Any state or territory who does not comply with SORNA, passed in 2006 calling for “substantial compliance” with federal law, could stand to lose 10 to 15 percent of Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program funds.

The Virgin Islands Department of Justice — just one of the many players in the process of rewriting the territory’s sex offender laws — is optimistic that the V.I. will comply with SORNA by the new July 2011 deadline.

“We are examining every single thing with a fine-toothed comb,” said V.I. DOJ spokesperson Sara Lezama. “It gets down to the really nitty gritty stuff. We’d rather be very thorough and diligent and have it take a lengthy period of time than rush it and not have a comprehensive law.”

Some of the countless issues faced by those rewriting the law include whether to require a sex offender who own a timeshare in the territory to register in the V.I., and how to handle situations like a father taking his 17-year-old son to a strip club to celebrate his high school graduation — a crime which could result in a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor with a sexual connotation, requiring the father to register as a sex offender.

“We don’t want to leave any loopholes open,” said Lezama. “It does take a very long time. We have several other agencies involved in order to have a really comprehensive perspective while writing the law.”

As the feral chicken population continues to explode across the territory, DPNR is trying to get a handle of the fowl problem as shown in this photo taken at Francis Bay in the V.I. National Park.

In response to the numerous complaints by residents throughout the territory in regards to the significant nuisance created by feral chickens inundating the community, Department of Planning and Natural Resources Commissioner Bob Mathes, announced last week the administration’s control and eradication strategy.

“This effort will truly require not only a comprehensive multi-agency response but also a genuine public/private partnership throughout the territory in order to be a success,” Mathes said.

The control and eradication strategy will address not only feral chickens but all of the territory’s stray animals, including dogs, cats and horses, Mathes added.

After clearing construction debris, Caneel Bay Resort officals planted native flora on the property.

As part of Caneel Bay Resort’s scheduled program of repair and maintenance, work was undertaken on the area of the property adjoining the North Shore Road.
This involved the removal of rubble and building materials discarded from past building projects.