Find out once and for all the impacts of cruise ships
If someone were to ask you how you might feel about the population of
your town growing by more than 10 percent overnight, what would you say?
What if the increase were more than 50 percent?
Before this becomes a guessing game, we’re talking about the number
of cruiseship passengers who disembark every week in Key West.
In peak months, the volume averages more than 2,500 a day, 17,500 in
a week – this in a town with a resident population of roughly 25,000. On
some days, with multiple ships in port, the counts can climb as high as
7,500 in a single day.
Last week, the Key West City Commission approved moving forward on a
long-delayed study to measure the impact cruise passengers are having on
the quality of life of Southernmost City residents.
It’s long overdue.
Just about any resident can cite a litany of crowded sidewalks,
overflowing side streets, noise, congestion, and the demise of
mom-and-pop retailing, replaced by T-shirt shops and souvenir stands.
Why even bother with a study?
Because both supporters and opponents of cruise traffic agree that
rapid growth in ship visits can’t continue without significant strain on
the city, its residents, and the potential to permanently change the Key
West "experience."
During last week’s commission meeting, commissioners made one
important concession, agreeing that any baseline on impact needs to
start at zero, a position taken by the activist group Last Stand two
years ago.
That means the university researchers hired to measure the impact of
cruise passengers on Key West’s commercial and residential
infrastructure start with no ship visitors and then calculate the impact
of each incremental wave.
Included in that analysis should be the costs incurred by the city
for these port calls. To date, most of the focus has been on revenue the
visits generate – some $3 million a year and climbing.
But to date, there’s been little work done to count the costs, and
that will be an important component in this effort.
There’s another whole area of concern associated with increased port
calls by these colossal vessels: Turbidity and harbor maintenance.
The U.S. Navy’s plans to dredge the ship channel and the Outer Mole
is greeted as a partial solution because it will remove decades of silt
and detritus that has built up since the last major harbor improvement,
in the 1960s.
The fishing captains, dive charters and others who make their living
by showcasing the ecological wonders of our marine environment need to
be part of this study. And there is plenty of research emerging from the
Caribbean Tourism Organization on the economic cost-benefits associated
with cruise-ship tourists and land-based tourism.
It’s long past time for the city to get this quality-of-life study
done and use the information to help shape the future for Key West’s
tourism industry. |
