MARIGOT: This Wednesday, September 14, a field visit was organized on the site of the former animal shelter destroyed in 2017 by Hurricane Irma. Bernadette Davis, 2nd Vice President of the Collectivité was surrounded by the services concerned to present to the press the long-awaited new project.
The lack of a shelter and pound on the territory is a sensitive issue that should no longer be a problem within a year and a half. The Collectivité having become aware of the urgency of the situation has made the creation of a shelter and a pound one of its priorities. Managed by the association I Love My Island Dog before its destruction in 2017, the new shelter will be located on the same site, in Mont Vernon. Laurent Guillaume, Director of the Environment, Water, Energy Department of the Collectivity presented the established schedule, namely the finalization of the call for tenders and its launch at the end of this month of September, the start of the studies over a period of 6 months and the actual construction of the shelter and pound which should take 9 months for delivery at the end of the 1st quarter 2024. The total budget is estimated at €1,500,000, €1 million for the facilities, and €500,000 for the surrounding development, a budget that should benefit in part from European funds.
Bruno Mounier, project management assistant who also acts as legal counsel for the Collectivity, is providing his expertise to draft the project’s specifications and fine-tune the contracting scheme for the call for tenders and the operation of the workforce, which requires, among other things, landscape architects, geotechnicians and architects. Three firms will be selected at the beginning of December of this year Bernadette Davis, 2nd vice-president in charge of the Living Environment, accompanied by Isabelle Gorizia, acting deputy director general of land use planning, is delighted with the progress of this project that many people, including animal rights associations, have been waiting for. In compliance with current regulations, twenty dogs will be housed in the shelter that will be built in the upper part of the site, which has a surface area of 12,000 m2, and another twenty dogs and twenty cats will be taken care of by the pound, which will be located in the lower part, as well as a cattery with a capacity of twenty cats, and facilities for the reception and care of the animals in an adjoining area.
The lower part of the site will be raised during the development phase to counter the risk of flooding. The plot of land belongs to the Collectivity and respects the 100m distance between the houses and the construction site. Initially, the land will be cleared and secured with road access managed by the operators that will be defined in the last phase of the project, either the Collectivity or a public service delegation such as an association that will meet the necessary criteria to manage the operation. The roadway will be developed and a parking area delimited for the employees of the refuge and the public. In a policy of sustainable development, the structures will be designed ecologically, with a thermal assessment of the buildings, reuse of water collected in a cistern, installation of photovoltaic panels, and course, integration of cyclonic constraints. The vegetation will also be organized to create a walking path and a park to which the population will have free access. Because the protection of animals is everyone’s business, the creation of a shelter and a pound active daily on the territory of Saint-Martin is supported by the majority of elected officials.
The post Opening of a shelter and pound in early 2024 in St. Martin appeared first on Faxinfo.
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