Bill Seeks To Abolish Grande Expropriations

By Zoraida Diaz

Text Wants to Change Limits of Baulas National Park

A new bill that would alter the limits of the Las Baulas National Marine Park in Playa Grande and grant President Arias sweeping powers to abolish the land expropriation process, has been introduced to the Legislative Assembly.

The bill titled Law of Protection of the Habitat of the Leatherback Turtle in Costa Rica, introduced by the opposition Social Christian Unity Party’s Jorge Eduardo Sánchez Sibaja in January of this year, had been languishing in the Assembly’s interminable backlog of legislative projects.

However, late last month the President’s Office ordered the bill fast-tracked, signing a decree which will have it seen within the Assembly’s extraordinary sessions, which give priority to the government’s agenda.

The bill makes two key arguments.

First, it wants to change Law 7524 that created the Marine Park so that the land portion of the park extends just 50 meters inland from the high tide mark.

The exact boundaries of the park have always been a point of much contention. Last year, the Attorney General’s office ruled the park extended a full 125 meters inland from the high tide line.

However, in limiting the park solely to the 50-meter public zone, the need to expropriate private property along the next 75 meters suddenly becomes irrelevant.

Second, the bill concludes “it is scientifically proven that the turtle population arriving on our beaches has diminished drastically in the last years, because they are fished, indiscriminately, outside our territorial waters.”

Commercial fishing practices, the bill argues, are the principal cause of the turtles’ high mortality rates along the Pacific.

Therefore, the proposal says, “if we want to protect the leatherback turtles, we must take measures to avoid their being fished in territorial waters, adjacent zones and in the exclusive economic zone of Costa Rican jurisdiction and in the ocean in general.”

The bill does not propose any measures to control indiscriminate fishing. It does propose the passage of seven articles ranging from declaring the protection and conservation of the leatherback turtle a matter of public interest, to approving October 15 the “National Leatherback Day.”

© Zoraida Diaz

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN: Not quite, but these schoolboys didn’t seem to mind the downpour as they rode home near Guardia in Guanacaste. Ah, the death rattles of summer. Costa Rica’s finding itself in the dying breaths of the dry season, when the country’s dust-induced antiquated appearance begins to bleed into a thousand shades of green. It’s dry grasslands become awash with the verdure of new growth, and unyielding hillsides morph into the slipperiest of slopes.

Land owners — 52 of which are currently facing expropriation orders — have long argued the real damage to the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) population is done at sea.

“For us, this may be the end of a nightmare,” said Jacques Fostroy, Vice-President of the local Association for the Protection of the Leatherback Turtles and Development of Tamarindo Bay.

“It is a great relief to demonstrate that we can live alongside nature,” Mr Fostroy said.

“Sustainable development is not to regress to a prehistoric age,” he said. “The conservation ‘Talibans’ want to eliminate human presence, but we insist that it’s possible to coexist with nature.”

Owners of land slated for expropriation in Playa Grande have battled the State for years, challenging the environmental group, the Leatherback Trust’s posture that the protection of Playa Grande, one of the Pacific Ocean’s primary nesting sites for the leatherback, is necessary for the survival of the critically-endangered species.

In February, the Leatherback Trust threatened to back-track on an agreement to finance the expropriations. The Trust had accumulated some $7 million from donors which James Spotila, President of the Leatherback Trust, said would be returned given questionable government support and the slowness of the government to expropriate.

The Minister for the Environment and Energy, Roberto Dobles, and President Arias were quick to sign the pending processes, reaffirming their support to the environmentalists’ cause.

But the bill presented this week by Mr Sánchez Sibaja aims to undo the Trust’s efforts of the last years. In fact, it gives the President the power to do away with the expropriations as if they had never been.

“[This law] authorizes the Executive Power to revoke and leave without effect all the administrative acts that it may have issued for the expropriation of land neighboring the park,” the bill reads. “It renders null all the expropriations in process…

“Furthermore, it authorizes the Prosecutor General — in name and representation of the State — to desist of ongoing expropriation judicial processes and gives the owners of affected properties who have already received payments six non-postponable months to return the monies to the State.”

Timing has been critical.

© Beach Times Files

PLAYA GRANDE: Land owners — 52 of which are currently facing expropriation orders — have long argued the real damage to the leatherback turtle population is done by commercial fishing, way out at sea.

The President’s fast-track was issued on April 29, making the Leatherback bill a last minute addition to the extraordinary legislative period, which ended April 30. This allowed Assemblyman Sánchez Sibaja to publish the bill in La Gaceta this week, bringing it to the forefront of the legislative process. And sending it to the Special Permanent Commission on the Environment.

The nine-member commission, which includes Mr Sánchez Sibaja and Guanacaste congresswoman, Maureen Ballestero, will study the proposal, requesting and compiling information from all relevant ministries, as well as outside scientific and technical evidence.

Once the commission issues a dictate, the full Assembly will evaluate the bill.

Vianney Saborío Hernández, a lawyer for several of the owners under expropriation, was pleased with the proposed law, but cautious about its passage.

“We hope the assemblymen will do their job,” he said, “although I realize that the absolute priority for the government is CAFTA’s complementary laws’ agenda.”

For its part, the Leatherback Trust appears to have been caught unawares. Clara Padilla, the Trust’s Executive Director, said she had no knowledge of the proposed legislation.

Both the Ministries of the Presidency and of the Environment and Energy would not comment.

However, in an interview with The Beach Times last week, the Minister of Tourism, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, may have expressed one of the reasons why the Arias Administration has scrambled for a resolution to the escalating problem.

“I think the country was somewhat cavalier or took the issue lightly when looking to extend its natural heritage and didn’t always measure the cost of that decision....” Mr Benavides said.

“Now it has become a conflict that we’re trying to resolve as a nation without necessarily having the funds to resolve this quickly,” he said.

“Even though is not up to me to find the financing for the expropriations, it concerns me not only as a government official, but as a Costa Rican.”