Marina plan in Mexico stirs up worries
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/world/6530448.htm
BY HUGH DELLIOS
Chicago Tribune
Aug. 14, 2003
BAHIA DE LOS ANGELES, Mexico - (KRT) - For a long time, anyone who knew the secret of this little slice of Eden in Baja California dreaded the day the
rest of civilization found out.
From the shore of this scruffy fishing village, one can watch whale sharks, dolphins and sea lions lounging in the bay. They come in to feed from the
Gulf of California, which Jacques Cousteau once called "the world's aquarium."
For sport fishermen, adventurers and desert lovers, the grueling eight-hour drive to get here from Tijuana and the lack of air conditioning in the
rustic hotels never mattered. To them, the place qualifies as one of the hemisphere's "last great outbacks."
So imagine the surprise of the locals and regulars when government officials arrived from Mexico City and announced a plan to preserve it all - a plan
that includes marinas, hotels and golf courses to attract tens of thousands of rich yacht captains from San Diego to Seattle.
"They said, `But we built Los Cabos and Cancun.' Well, everybody here says we don't want that," said Guillermo Galvan, who serves shrimp tacos at his
cafe between the village's two primitive piers. "We don't want big hotels and we don't want - what do you call that? Golf."
And there blows the controversy over the so-called Nautical Staircase, President Vicente Fox's ambitious plan to build 27 marinas down one side of
Baja California and up the other side to lure the big-spending boating crowd. The plan even includes a special road, halfway down the peninsula, to
transport yachts from one side to the other.
In the next few weeks, Mexico's Environment Ministry will rule on the plan. It will have to decide whether the project is an ingenious, low-impact
endeavor that will protect the sensitive marine environment, as proponents say, or a foolish pipe dream that will deposit needless marinas in the home
of endangered sea turtles and migrating whales, as opponents say.
Since unveiling the concept two years ago, government promoters have used the same language as opponents when describing it. Each emphasizes how
special the 1,000-mile Baja Peninsula is and that a plan is needed to control the development that inevitably will arrive some day.
Local leaders and environmentalists fear that greed, ambition, hollow promises and corruption will intervene. They say Fox's nearly $2 billion project
risks becoming either a white elephant or another example of how Mexico overdeveloped parts of its coastline, such as the crowded tourist strips in
Cancun and Acapulco.
Fox's top aides say the real risk is in not pursuing the project. They say it is the best way to control the amount of tourism while providing income
alternatives to fishermen who have already depleted the Baja's stocks of tuna, dorado and mackerel.
"This project isn't that big. It uses much of what exists already and organizes it," said Victor Lichtinger, Mexico's environment minister. "Baja
California has a coastline that is longer than Italy's. It is an enormous place. If this is done right, it will bring much more harmony and an
ecological zoning to the area."
South of Canada's tundra, Baja California is about as untouched as you can get. Its 3 million people are concentrated near Tijuana and La Paz, and in
between there is little but a narrow highway, cactus-filled desert, and isolated beaches and national parks where campers and surfers escape that
other California.
Bahia de Los Angeles is one of a number of small fishing villages on the gulf side, and it is crucial to the Fox plan because it would be the site of
a marina where yachts would be relaunched after being towed more than 80 miles across the peninsula on the road.
As of now, however, it is home to just 100 fishing families. Their hillside shanties are surrounded by discarded boats and other junk, but they enjoy
a magical view from their front-porch sofas of the volcanic islands that are part of a nature reserve in the bay.
The hand-net fishing launches return before siesta time each day, and beachcombing can produce giant fossilized shark teeth and 16th-century Spanish
gold coins. But the village also has become an anxious place where fishermen worry about the declining catch and how their children are going to make
a living.
Big talk about a marina inspires dreams about reliable electricity, a badly needed high school, enough tourists to support a shift to less-intensive
sport fishing and no more outhouses. But villagers also fear they'll lose their homes to land speculators and end up washing dishes for rich visitors.
"What we need to make the transition is more tourism, more people," said Fermin Smith, a fisherman and former mayor who now works with an
environmental group, Pronatura. "If a marina is necessary to have development, OK, but it has to be well-done and not too big, and we have to benefit
from it."
The Nautical Staircase is an idea that has been kicked around since the 1970s, but Fox aides say it is more feasible now because of growing interest
in ecotourism. By the project's completion in 2014, they estimate they will lure as many as 60,000 boats and 1 million tourists a year.
The idea is to build a marina every 70 miles to provide a place to spend the night, buy supplies and fill up a gas tank. The plan includes established
marinas in Ensenada, La Paz, Puerto Penasco and Mazatlan, and smaller marinas in between.
In more sensitive areas, smaller "floating" marinas would be built offshore, officials say.
"We don't want to repeat Cancun. Now we have another responsibility, to take care of the [Gulf of California]," said Alejandro Rodriguez, a former
banker who is the project director for Mexico's tourism development agency, Fonatur. "If we don't take care of the nature, we won't have people
coming."
However, the unfolding of the project so far has fed some of the opponents' doubts.
Initially, Fonatur officials unveiled outsize plans, including a proposal to put 1,800 boats in Bahia de Los Angeles. Environmentalists warned that
the project could chase away the whales by interrupting currents that carry the plankton they eat into the bay.
Doubts also were raised on the other coast, where the government failed to get the proper permits before beginning to build the cross-Baja road
leading from Santa Rosaliita, an even tinier fishing village pinpointed for a 42-boat marina.
In that village, a surfer favorite so remote that it depends on solar energy, government contractors have already built the marina's wave breaks out
of boulders. But even project boosters criticize how the $3 million breaks were placed in the path of the fiercest waves, which is why the marina
space is already refilling with sand.
"Here the waves are really strong. They may not have taken that into account. They never asked me," said Jose Luis Macklish, 65, who lives on the dune
overlooking the village and who says he donated the shore land for the marina.
Finally, critics say the project managers greatly overestimated the number of yachts they will attract. That argument was supported last week by
yachters laying anchor in Bahia de Los Angeles who said their shore needs run more toward a six-pack of beer than a round of golf.
"We had breakfast at Guillermo's, and it was just fine," said Jennifer Klein, 58, who has sailed the Baja coast with her husband, Bob, 55, in their
40-foot boat for the past three years. "They were kind enough to let us leave a bag of trash with them, and that's all we needed."
Rodriguez, the project director, said the criticisms have been exaggerated and based on "rumors that we want to build 22 Cancuns." But he said his
team has heard the concerns, scaled back the marina and golf course plans and will let the Environment Ministry decide the best locations for some of
the moorings.
"We made mistakes. We are learning in the process," he said. "Rest assured: We are not going to build marinas that don't have [boats]."
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