And the results of a telephone survey which asked residents how Bermuda could achieve sustainable development, a balance between preservation and economic opportunity, is to be released in the coming weeks.

According to Ross Andrews, project co-ordinator of Government's Sustainable Development team, the consultation process is close to completion.

A former consultant for the Department of the Environment and Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom, his initial six-month contract in Bermuda has been extended through January as his team works towards an action plan.

"We're aiming to get a draft out of the public consultation by the end of September," he said. "Something we've encountered in every single public meeting and something that we're seeing in the consultation responses, is that this is needed.

"The concern is that nothing's going to happen. That nothing will be delivered because the Government doesn't have the ability or the fortitude to make the hard decisions."

The project co-ordinator insisted that every piece of submitted information ? whether verbalised or presented in written form ? would be considered by his team and denied any possibility that the public consultation was merely a smokescreen.

"It's the largest consultation process this country's ever been through. Why would we be going through the process? Why would there be a prior commitment to a sustainable development unit? Why is there a 20-member sustainable development round table who are all representatives of independent organisations? If it's not going anywhere, why would we bother committing to an annual report?

"There's a lot of cynicism and, because of that, we don't want to waste a lot of time in getting something to the table.

"This is why I think it's important to publish the (phone survey) ? an independent piece of work which we commissioned. Cabinet need to be made aware of it first and then we'll put it in the public domain so people can see specific quantifiable data on what other people have said.

"I don't think there'll be any surprises because a lot of these issues have come out in public meetings. There are concerns about open space. There are concerns about water. There are concerns about energy. There are concerns about waste. There are concerns about anti-social behaviour. There are concerns about youth development. There are concerns about an over-reliance on guest workers. There are concerns about mutual respect between Bermudians and guest workers. There are concerns about equality of opportunity. There are concerns about the diversity of the economy.

"But as I keep articulating, we can't work out what the solutions are until we know what the problems are, which is what we've been asking the general public."

Mr. Andrews and his five-member team solicited residents' opinions through public meetings, telephone, Internet and mail surveys, and held talks with private interest groups.

A deadline was initially set for August 1 for residents to submit their opinions. That date has been extended.

"We haven't tallied up the responses from the online questionnaire," he explained. "People are welcome to keep sending them in. It would be ludicrous to say: 'Sorry, you missed the deadline. We're not interested in what you have to say'."

He added that the mailed-in response was in keeping with expectations.

"In theory every household received (a form) but there have been some ? not many, just a few ? who have called us saying that they didn't get anything. They've been coming in to pick them up. We've had nearly 600 responses mailed in and we're still getting 60 a day.

"But we wanted to give everybody the opportunity to feed in. At the end of the day, nobody can turn around and say they didn't know about this."

The relatively low representation, less than five per cent of the island's households, was not a disappointment, he added.

"A lot of people just don't fill in questionnaires. Many people had already turned up to public meetings. We'd also taken presentations to all sorts of different groups on the island ? a lot of people probably think they've had their say.

"The survey forms that are returned don't necessarily give a picture of everyone in Bermuda. They tend to be people who are already engaged in society and not necessarily the people whose views traditionally aren't heard.

"And so we also had a phone-based survey done by one of the companies in Bermuda ? those results you can extrapolate across the whole of Bermuda. They give us quantifiable data ? and that will be released publicly in the next couple of weeks just so that people can see what people have been saying."

He admitted there is a lot of cynicism regarding their work. In a recent opinion piece in only this week, Robert Stewart, a former chief executive officer of Shell Bermuda Ltd. and the author of said the Sustainable Development Project was doomed to fail.

Mr. Andrews was reluctant to speak about the article but said it was a shame Mr. Stewart had not learned more about his group's work before he made his comments.

"I was very interested in that because he was making all sorts of comments about the project and all sorts of comments about the project team themselves which I personally don't consider appropriate," he said.

"Because I don't consider it appropriate, I don't consider it appropriate to comment on his views. But what I will say is that his basic premise demonstrated that he hadn't read the consultation document at all and that he hadn't been to any of the public meetings to find out anything about the Sustainable Development Project.

"At no point had he contacted either myself or another member of the project team to find out whether his views were in any way valid or to give us the opportunity to either assuage his fears or reinforce his ideas. There were various bits in the article that, had he actually bothered to do any research before offering his opinions, he wouldn't have said."

For more on Bermuda's Sustainable Development Project, visit www.chartingourcourse.gov.bm