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Most Attendees at Marina Meeting Oppose Plans; Experts Highlight Risks

December 12, 2007 | Tags: Community News, Environment | 22 Comments

What Puerto Viejo Could Look Like?
A poster produced by one resident showing what Puerto Viejo could look like with increased development. Photo by Anne Clark, courtesy A.M. Costa Rica

Saturday’s meeting at the Casa Cultural about the proposed marina at Playa Negra brought out about 60 people, mostly from the expat community. They came to hear several experts who had looked at the plans and came to give information on the risks that the marina could bring to the environment. The people attending the meeting were generally opposed to the project - a similar results to online comments on The Talamanca News where comments have run 14 to 1 against the project.

Several expert witnesses spoke on the possible environmental damage that this project could cause.  Puerto Viejo lies between two protected areas, Parque Nacional Cahuita to the north and Refugio Gandoca Manzanillo to the south. Both contain important living reefs. Engineer Jose Alvarado highlighted in his speech that toxic products such as paint and oil used in the maintenance of the boats, along with an increase in sewage and pollution, could damage marine life in these two areas. Oceanographer Guillermo Quiros then questioned a report produced for the developers by Watermark S.A., and said that the firm’s study of the currents does not correspond with reality. He raised concerns that the breakwaters detailed by the plans, some of which will be 6 meters in height, could destroy the Salsa Brava, Costa Rica’s biggest and most powerful surf wave.

Other speakers were concerned about the economic impacts of the marina; that the high-brow marina customers would neither patronize existing Puerto Viejo businesses nor fit into the feel of the community. “The marina is going to be its own community,” said Jose Bizet Delgado, the meeting’s organizer. “It will include a commercial area with supermarkets, five-star hotels, restaurants and casinos. The people who come here on their yachts will not come into the town to use the services of local businesses.”

Dana Gibson serves Ice Cream
Dana Gibson at the local Heladeria. Photo by Helen Thompson, courtesy A.M. Costa Rica

“Rich people aren’t going to eat in little stores,” said language teacher Dana Gibson, a Californian who has been living in Puerto Viejo for four years. Everyone here will get bought out, and it will become Miami. We’re right on the edge – either we’ll be taken like everywhere else, or we’ll do it right.”

But not everyone in the community opposes the project. The developer claims that the local (i.e. Tico and Afro-Caribbean not expat) community overwhelmingly supports the project: “People up in Escazú live like they’re in the First World, but people in Talamanca live like they are in Uganda. 90 percent of the community in Puerto Viejo want this to happen. This is a community project with Costa Rican investors and it will be an ecological project that takes care of its environment,” said Walter Coto Molina, the developers’ lawyer and a former government minister.

“The marina is a necessity for Talamanca, Talamanca is the poorest zone of Costa Rica and this project is essential for its development.”

Coto did not attend the meeting.

Local residents look forward to the jobs that would be provided by the marina and to the more well-heeled tourists who they feel might spread their money around more liberally. The problem is that this experience has not been borne out in other developments - generally mega-developments for wealthy tourists leave little positive impact on the local community and import most of their workers as well. The kind of development that has taken place to date in Puerto Viejo is one that locals have the most opportunity to participate in as entrepreneurs and business owners, not just as maids and security guards.

Neither is everyone in the expat community against the project. Tina Stavest, owner of Jammin Juice and Jerk Joint, a restaurant situated near the development site, said: “I come from the coast of Canada, and we have hundreds of marinas there. They can fit in wonderfully if they are done right. There’s no reef here — the run-off from the banana plantations killed it long ago. Puerto Viejo was a harbor a long time ago when it was settled, and now it will be one again,” she said.

Opponents of the project face an uphill battle. While the marina plans have not yet been approved, as the developers have not completed an environmental impact study, the Municipalidad de Talamanca has declared its “marked interest in the execution of the marina plans” as a benefit to the economic and touristic development of the area. The opposition must now try to prove that the reef nearest to Playa Negra is still alive, and to continue pushing for Puerto Viejo to be declared a city, as this will give it an increased ability to influence the proceedings.

With contributions from: A.M. Costa Rica: Some Puerto Viejo expats feel threatened by marina.