MEXICO CITY — A hotel project in northern Mexico has stalled following a series of legal complaints that it failed to meet environmental standards, which would have protected coastal ecosystems and the local fishing economy.

The Tres Santos hotel project, in Baja California Sur, will have to carry out new environmental impact studies in order to obtain permits that it failed to respect when it was launched almost ten years ago, leading to the destruction of wetlands and conflict with worried local fishermen. their means of subsistence.

“We want our rights and interests to be protected and respected,” said John Moreno, a lawyer who has filed several lawsuits against the project. “We want the law to be strictly enforced and the environment to be respected, and that requires them to respect the wetlands, that requires them to respect the dunes. »

Developers planned the hotel for the town of Todos Santos, where many residents rely on fishing and tourism to make a living.

In 2014, Black Creek Group, a Colorado-based real estate company, began consulting residents on the proposed multimillion-dollar development, including three hotels, commercial sites, a 400,000-gallon water tank and more of 4,000 residential houses – capable of housing almost the entire population of Todos Santos at the time.

At first, talks between the two sides were going well, Moreno said. But as development progressed, residents realized that the environmental impact would be greater and greater. worse than what was initially described to them. Some wetlands have been filled in and rivers and streams have been diverted.

Fishermen were evicted from areas they traditionally used for fishing. They began to fear that their fishing practices, which date back about a century, would be permanently compromised by the construction.

Ares Wealth Management, which purchased Black Creek Group in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Between 2015 and 2016, residents staged a sit-in at the entrance to the construction site of one of the hotels, temporarily halting work on the project. In 2017, due to his involvement in a case against the project, Moreno spent 100 days in prison.

Since 2015, Moreno and other residents have filed legal complaints at all levels of government in hopes of stopping the project, or at least getting answers about what was going to happen. In many cases, they found that the company did not comply with the parameters of building permits, including encroaching on land not included in the construction plans.

Earlier this year, a court ruled that the original environmental impact study did not justify the development being carried out. It should have been rejected and redone before work even began.

The decision is above all a symbolic victory for Moreno and others fighting against the hotel, since the project was sold to a Mexican investment fund, which has a different vision of the region that will require a new study of environmental impact.

“I hope this is a learning process that not only the community has learned from, but also the authorities and the developer,” Moreno said. “Because if they did, they would know that they have a historic opportunity to uplift and create and create a better reality and make a difference for an entire community.”

Banner image: Residents protest against the Tres Santos project. Photo courtesy of BajasurTv.

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