Though Interior Department officials say they have reached an understanding with the operator of the Caneel Bay Resort at Virgin Islands National Park to finally determine the extent of environmental contamination at the resort, the department and the operator so far have failed to respond in detail to a notice of intent that they will be sued over the matter. 

In early December, after Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Rob Wallace visited Caneel Bay and met with Gary Engle of CBIA, LLC, Interior announced an agreement that would allow Park Service contractors to return to the property to determine the extent of any environmental contamination there and construct a cleanup plan.

What that analysis discovers, and how expensive it might turn out to be to address the contamination, will determine whether CBIA, which has operated Caneel Bay since 2004, is able to work out a concessions lease with the National Park Service once the existing Retained Use Estate expires in September 2023.

That announcement did not satisfy David DiGiacomo, a Denver attorney who has a home on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In September he had sent a notice of intent to sue over environmental contamination at the once-idyllic resort to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, National Park Service, the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and CBIA.

DiGiacomo had filed the notice under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, also known as CERLCA, as well as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Under those laws, if Interior and CBIA did not respond within 90 days, DiGiacomo could sue them in a bid to force them to investigate, and if needed mitigate, possible environmental contamination ranging from semivolatile organic compounds, arsenic, mercury, and hydrocarbons tied to fuel, to possibly asbestos and even DDT.

While DiGiacomo was told by an assistant Interior Department solicitor in the department's Environmental Compliance and Response Branch that the work Wallace had negotiated would begin "perhaps as early as February 2021," that didn't sit well with the attorney. Last week he sent a second notice to Interior and Engle.

"The response (from the assistant solicitor) confirmed that the department recognized the importance of performing an environmental investigation to fully characterize the nature and extent of any contamination that may exist on the Caneel property," he wrote. "However, the response does not address how and when the environmental investigation will occur. What areas of the approximately 150 acres will be assessed? No timeline for the investigation was given other than 'perhaps starting as early as February of 2021.'"

DiGiacomo also asked whether Interior had laid out parameters for how the analysis was to be conduced, what timeframe had been established for the analysis to be completed, and how, and when, a cleanup if required would be conducted.