Cleanup of hazardous wastes at Caneel Bay in Virgin Islands National Park will start early in 2024/NPS file

Work to remove asbestos-containing material at the Caneel Bay Resort site within the Virgin Islands National Park will begin in early 2024, the park has announced.

Testing in 2021 detected a variety of wastes, some hazardous to humans, on not quite eight acres of the grounds of the once-tony resort that was pummeled by back-to-back hurricanes in September 2017. That testing found varying levels of arsenic, elevated levels of certain pesticides, and a "mixture of benign organic materials, plastics, metals, and CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) hazardous substances, including the pesticide DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls."

Subsequent testing detected asbestos-containing materials in building materials on the site.

This first phase of environmental cleanup at Caneel Bay, which was estimated to cost $6 million, will focus on removing asbestos-containing debris from 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria. On-site work will be conducted pursuant to the National Park Service's delegated authority under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. 

“After much planning and evaluation, we are pleased to begin environmental cleanup at Caneel Bay,” said Penelope Del Bene, acting superintendent of the national park. “We look forward to contributing to a safer, healthier environment for our local community.”

Plans for the asbestos removal work resulted from the park’s 2021 Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA) Report and 2022 EE/CA Report Addendum, which documented releases of hazardous substances at the site. That report and others can be found at this site.

Contractors on the project will have the proper accreditations to safely handle, pack and transport asbestos-containing materials. NPS has also hired an independent company to monitor the removal actions and conduct perimeter air monitoring to ensure asbestos fibers are not released into the environment. Work areas will be closed, except to qualified individuals. On-site work is expected to last three to four weeks.

Over the course of the project, a total of six 20-foot-long cargo containers will be brought into the site, loaded with appropriately bagged and labeled ACM, and removed from the island as each container is filled. Containers of ACM will be transported from St. John to St. Thomas using a local barge service. ACM removed from the site will be disposed of in a permitted landfill in the continental United States. During the work period, visitors may notice increased equipment noise. Minimal traffic impacts are expected.

Anticipated future removal actions under CERCLA include the removal of contaminated soil in the site’s landscaping, maintenance, and engineering areas, as well as the removal of soil and waste from the landfill near Honeymoon Beach.

A lawsuit over ownership of the Caneel Bay Resort at Virgin Islands National Park has left the heavily damaged property in limbo while the matter moves through the judicial process.

While the National Park Service was to take ownership of the 150-acre property on October 1 under a decades-old agreement crafted by the late Laurance S. Rockefeller, the agency asked that the transfer not occur with the lawsuit pending.

Rockefeller in 1956 donated the land on the island of St. John that today makes up Virgin Islands National Park. At the time, he held back roughly 150 acres for the Caneel Bay Resort. In 1983, the Jackson Hole Preserve, which Rockefeller had established, donated the land to the park; but it came with a Retained Use Estate agreement that gave the Preserve free use of the property and its facilities for 40 years. At the end of that four-decade period, September 2023, the RUE document dictated that the buildings and their improvements be donated to the Park Service.

While the Preserve initially held the RUE, it was passed down to other companies, and finally to CBI Acquisitions, Inc. in 2004. 

After the 2017 storms, Gary Engle, CBI's principal, worked with U.S. Rep. Stacy Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, to craft legislation that would extend the RUE for 60 years, a time period Engle maintained was needed to attract investors for the estimated $100 million it would cost to restore the resort's glimmer. But that legislation failed to gain traction.

In 2019 Engle offered to essentially terminate the RUE and sell the resort to the federal government for $70 million, a move that raised questions of whether he was properly interpreting the the terms of Rockefeller's RUE.

Engle in June 2022 brought a lawsuit against the United States, claiming that the resort legally belongs to CBI, and asked a federal judge to declare the Interior Department has no legal claim to the property.

This past July the Park Service released its vision for a restored Caneel Bay Resort. Under the plan, a "21st century eco-resort" could offer up to 166 overnight accommodations, which was the limit of the resort that was largely destroyed by the 2017 hurricanes. The plan did not, however, provide any detail for the lodgings or price ranges. It did call for day use areas for park visitors not staying at the resort, perhaps at Honeymoon Beach, Little Caneel Beach, and Caneel Beach.

Development of that vision, however, is on hold pending the outcome of the legal matters,