CR Surf News

How a citizen can stop those environmental vandal
By Dennis Rogers
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

http://www.amcostarica.com/index.htm

Is the neighbor playing fast and loose with Mother Nature?

Are the trees getting chopped up?

Is trash just getting dumped alongside the river?

Residents don't have to watch the environment get degraded. There is a Costa Rican superagency that can step is and stop the carnage.

It is the Secretaria Tecnica National Ambiental, the environmental watchdog for the Ministerio de Ambiente y Energia. Costa Ricans call this agency SETENA for short, and it is the Costa Rican version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Developers of any industrial project or significant housing development must file an environmental impact statement for approval. This provides a ready point of reference for violations of environmental code, but, of course, only applies to formal operations. Illegal fill and tree cutting seem to be the most common sort of violation for housing developments.

Developers take seriously the implications of a denuncia or complaint. One situation in San Isidro de Heredia had the local municipality on the scene to close a soil dump too near the Rio Tibás, on the developer’s own property within a few hours after a complaint had been filed.

Any fill even of clean soil or rubble requires a municipal permit. Any cutting of natural forest also requires permits. Complaints should first be addressed to the local municipality, but political patronage, corruption, or a simple desire to have a larger tax base means many cases go unanswered. If the situation continues for more than a few days after reporting it to the municipality, then a resident should contact the Secretaria Tecnica.

All files (expedientes) at the Secretaria Tecnica are freely available to the public. A visitor needs the file number for the impact statement in question. If this isn’t immediately evident, the staff can help. The files may not be taken out of the building. For copies, a librarian will accompany a visitor to the closest photocopy machine, which is at a pharmacy down the street.

The offices are in the east San José suburb of Sabanilla. See www.minae.go.cr/setena/ for more details. Would-be visitors should check for times, too, because the office is open to the public for limited hours currently Tuesday and Friday.

Evidence for a complaint should be clear and well-documented. First a complainant needs to obtain the business name (ends in S.A.) and number (starts with 3-101-) of the offender. If the property is not owned by a Sociedad Anónima, the owner’s name and cédula number will suffice. As the owners are unlikely to cooperate with the investigation, the information is available at the municipality where the property is located. A great deal of patience is needed for this process.

The cover letter to the Secretaria Tecnica should be a clear description of the situation in Spanish. Then those making the complaint should include the best documentation possible with photographs, if available. Satellite images of Costa Rica on Google Earth are much improved of late, and can be useful in the Central Valley. A copy of the letter is a must. It will be stamped as received on that date and provides proof of submission. The Secretaria Tecnica will (eventually) inspect the site and pass the case to the environmental tribunal, if warranted.

If there is no environmental impact statement, the process is the same except one must submit the complaint directly to the tribunal. Usually a visit to the municipality where the violation is taking place will be a better first step.

The process is open to abuse. As the Guatemalan company that makes Big Cola attempted to break into the Costa Rican market against the global soft-drink giants, it reportedly suffered repeated complaints about its environmental impact even though it is in an industrial district of Cartago.