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Public attention has been drawn to emotional protests at the Deux Branches quarry, with claims that the mining activity connected to Dominica’s international airport project represents environmental destruction and illegality. While passion has its place in national discourse, policy and development must be guided by facts science, and the national interest, not fear, misinformation or theatrics.
During a site visit to the International Airport site last Thursday, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit laid out a clear justification for the quarrying at Deux Branches which exposes the weakness and inconsistency of the arguments now being promoted against it.
The Prime Minister made it clear:
Conditions at the site today are dramatically improved compared to just weeks ago. Mud runoff has been eliminated, the roads are clean and engineered controls are actively reducing environmental impact.
To suggest that Dominica is blindly destroying its environment ignores the reality that modern infrastructure projects globally operate with mitigation–no country develops by pretending impact does not exist. Responsible countries manage it, as is being done currently.
One of the most glaring omissions in the protest narrative is history. The Deux Branches site has been quarried before in 1969 and again in the 1980s, including during the construction of the Hatton Garden–Portsmouth road. That road, built using Deux Branches aggregate, outperformed others constructed at the same time, lasting longer due to the exceptional density and strength of the stone.
Independent experts have confirmed that the rock at Deux Branches possesses the precise structural qualities required for major airport infrastructure. Airports require materials that meet exacting international standards. Not all stone qualifies. Deux Branches does.
The call to halt the quarry entirely offers no viable alternative. Importing aggregate from overseas, including suggestions such as Canada, would be economically absurd, environmentally contradictory and fiscally irresponsible. Why should Dominica export its own aggregate abroad, yet import the same material at vastly higher cost for its most
important infrastructure project?
As the Prime Minister correctly stated, the resources belong to the Dominican people.
Using them responsibly to build homes, infrastructure and opportunity is not exploitation.
It is development. To argue otherwise is to argue that Dominica should remain permanently underdeveloped to preserve a romantic image, while citizens continue to suffer limited access, high travel costs and constrained economic growth.
Much of the opposition rhetoric relies on alarmist language, unverified claims of illegality, and emotionally charged appeals rather than documented facts. Development decisions cannot be made by who shouts loudest or who invokes fear most dramatically.
The international airport is not a vanity project. It is a transformational national investment which will improve access, lower travel barriers, expand tourism, create jobs and strengthen economic resilience. Dominica does not face a choice between development and environmental protection. It faces a choice between responsible, managed development and paralysis driven by misinformation.
The international airport must proceed because nations that do not build for the future deny opportunity to their people.
Facts must prevail over fear.
Dominica deserves no less.
