by Rod Hughes

A newly passed bill allowing projects to be subjected to a referendum on envrionmental grounds has met fierce opposition of the Arias Administration and sewed discord with its own congressional delegation. The bill passed with the backing of President Arias’s National Liberation party deputies.

Liberation floor leader Maureen Ballasteros says she was aware that the Envrionmental Ministry opposed the bill but that she was unaware that the administration itself was against it. Environmental Minister Roberto Dobles huddled with Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias to find the legal means to block the bill’s implementation.

One avenue is, of course, a veto. The President could object to various provisions of the bill or all of it and send it back to committee. Then the lawmakers would be faced with the choice of either acceeding to the President’s wishes and amending the bill or overriding the veto with a two-thirds majority required. This would mean gathering 38 votes if all lawmakers are in attendance.

The controversy that causes so much consternation within the Liberation deputies comes on the heels of the beginning of a court investigation of both the President and Dobles. The issue there is a decree signed by President Arias allowing the Las Crucitas mining concession to clear cut 191 hectares of land in order to expand their open pit gold mining operation. Environmental advocates say the decree violated some articles of the environmental law.

The bill is aimed at ensuring that projects will not be ramrodded through over the heads of local groups opposing it on environmental grounds. It requires a petition signed by 10% of the electorate in the district or canton in which the project is located, forcing a referendum vote. On its final reading, the measure passed by a unannimous 48 votes, all of the lawmakers attending the session.

by Rod Hughes

President Oscar Arias defended himself before the press Wednesday for having issued a decree allowing La Crucitas gold mine employees to cut 191 hectares of forest, including one type of tree that feeds an endangered species. (See previous blog published this week.) The Chief Executive is under investigation due to the decree. Meanwhile, the Consitutional Chamber (Sala IV) of the Supreme Court ordered all deforestation stopped and a team from the leading daily paper, La Nación sent to inspect the disputed area reported Thursday that it appeared that the mining firm Industrias Infinito had complied.

But the paper also reported that in just three days of cutting, dozens of men armed with chain saws had cut hundreds of trees, including the protected yellow almond, chief sustenance of the endangered green parrot. Correspondent Carlos Hernández reported seeing 50-foot specimens of yellow almond trunks on the ground, along with other forest giants of precious woods. The company, Hernández wrote, intended to send the trees to sawmills in San Carlos and to use some of the lumber to construct further installations at the open pit mine.

Mine spokesman Alonso Chávez told the paper defensively, “We didn’t do anything against the law or behind anyone’s back.” But the point in question is whether the decree that authorized the cutting was against the law. The Sala IV had issued its decision that flatly prohibited the cutting of any yellow almonds only a week before the President signed thje decree. During its reproductive period, from June through November, the giant green parrot eats only the fruit of this tree species.

Arias said he was urged to sign the decree by not only Environment Minister Robert Robles but was authorized by various governmental agencies, such as Setena (environmental protection). Las Crucitas is only a few miles south of the San Juan River that forms the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is part of the giant San Carlos canton, which itself rivals in size some provinces. Arias claimed he was not aware that the decree broke any law and that his advisors gave no hint that the document did not fulfill all environmental requisites.

Ironically, the Chief Executive has been praised internationally for his so-called “Peace with Nature” initiative and has tried to project an emphatically “green” image wherever possible. But, whereas his predecessor, President Abel Pacheco, banned all new mining during his four-year term, Arias has again opened the door to even open pit mining. Infinito’s concession was signed by then-President Miguel Angel Rodríguez in 2002.

by Rod Hughes

Judicial officials are investigating President Oscar Arias and his Environment Minister Roberto Dobles for a decree authorizing gold-mine operators of Industrias Infinito S. A. to cut off more trees for its open pit operation at Las Crucitas in Alajuela province. The Oct. 13 decree called the increased deforestation “in the public interest” and “of national advantage.”

The mine has long been watched by the English-language weekly The Tico Tiimes, a longtime pioneer in the nation’s press in covering environmental concerns. Earlier the paper reported that some of the trees included in the area to be cut included yellow almond, whose seeds form an important part of the diet of green parrots, a protected species.

The probe is to determine if the President and his minister violated the prevaricato code, which is defined as taking official action that is against the law or is “backed by falsified facts.” The decree may have violated at least one environmental law. Prosecution could give the President’s international standing a serious setback as well as blunting his efforts to enlist overseas aid for protection of the country’s underfunded national parks and wildlife reserves.

Should prosecutors take the unprecendented step to take Arias and Dobles to court, the Legislative Assembly would be charged with raising the legal immunity those officials now enjoy. In the past, lawmakers have been reluctant to lift the immunity of their own accused colleagues, let alone a sitting president of the stature of Arias. In the 1970s, the Legislative Assemby refused to even force President Jose “Don Pepe” Figueres to testify before an investigating committee after the feisty president had defied a legal summons.

In the 10 years of the mine’s existance, the owner estimates that 700,000 ounces of gold have been extracted from the ground. When the company wanted to expand the mine, the President granted it in a decree that claimed it benefited the San Carlos area north of San Jose, employing 253 persons with an estimated annual payroll of $4.1 million. The decree authorized cutting of 191 hectares of forest.

The government estimates that it has already received more than $70 million in taxes from the mine. Infinito also promised to plant 49 trees for every one cut and to create and preserve a wildlife corridor in the area. An Infiito spokesman, Jose Andres Soto, says that all the trees to be cut are on the company land and cutting permission was issued. But San Carlos prosecutor responded that the “massive tree cutting” covered a wide area and noted that the court’s Constitutional Chamber has flatly ruled that cutting the yellow almond tree is prohibited.

The mine was first proposed in 1994 by the Canadian company Pacer Dome but the company withdrew four years later and Industrias Infinito took over the concession granted in 2002 by then-President Miguel Angel Rodriguez.

But this case is far from the only instance of deforestation in the news. The daily paper La Nacion reported yesterday that seizure of illegal logs is up this year by about 20%. But that may be because local law enforcement is paying more attention. One of the most damaged areas is Upala where the paper quoted police officer Alexis Nunez as saying, “There are a lot of people who appear to be bent on terminating the forests without thinking of the negative consequences that we’ll suffer in the future.”

“We need tougher legislation that punishes the crime of illegal logging to avoid so much damage,” he added. This may be contrasted with times in the past century when law enforcement winked at illegal logging. And Nunez’s point about tougher laws is based on experience. The anti-deforestation codes specify fines that have eroded over the inflation-plagued years in real monetary terms.

Another problem is that cops have to catch infractors in the act. Eugenio Hernandez if the Environmental Ministry noted that 55 loggers were prosecuted this year but the majority had to be released because they were not caught red handed. In Upala alone, police have conducted 22 sweeps and confiscated three logging trucks, three power saws, a portable sawmill besides finding three ox teams used to haul logs out of places too rough for motor vehicles. But Hernandez has to watch over 250,000 hectares of forest, an impossible task without reconnaissance aircraft.

But logging is not the only villain. On Oct. 10 The Tico Times published an expose of rampant tree cutting by developers in the Fila Costena area of the Osa Peninsula on the southwest coast. Reporter Leland Baxter-Neal wrote that mountain range “looks as if it had a bad shave.” As one approches the coastal range, he wrote vividly, “the green gives way here and there to brown scrapes of bare earth cut for houses and roads.”

Yesterday’s La Nacion reported that Monday a team of 18 officials from the Administrational Environmental Tribunal and the Ombudsman’s Office are starting a belated inspection of the area. In July, 15 developmental projects were closed. “We checked out several and they continued being closed,” said Jose Lino Chavez, president of the Tribunal. But, showing the scope of the problem, they also are inspecting 20 or 30 other construction sites that have been reported.

So far, reported Baxter-Meal, the results of this environmental abuse have even extended to offshore coral reefs being killed by erosion seidment carried downriver and into the Pacific Ocean. But Osa mayor Alberto Cole took umbriage at a municipal council resolution freezing development in his municipal area. He told The Tico Times that without a booming construction industry many local residents would face poverty, underscoring the clash between development economics and environmental concerns.

by Rod Hughes

Ever since the giant Dos Pinos dairy operation abandoned glass bottles in the last half of the 20th century, milk cartons have added to the litter that defaces urban areas of an otherwise beautiful country. Next month an expanded processing of discarded tetrabrik cartons will be turned into dog houses, wall board and durable school desks.

Costa Rica came into recycling late and it is still in its infancy here– the sprawling canton of Desamparados still has no recycling and, thus, is one of the dirtiest areas in the Central Valley, if not the most. And, like the Dos Pinos operation which exports milk to Central American countries, it has been private enterprise and not government that has led the way. Perhaps, by turning waste into marketable products, the cooperative will learn, as others elsewhere have, that “thar’s gold in them thar landfills.”

So far, Dos Pinos has only produced 28 tons of recycled products per month, representing only a tiny portion of hundreds of thousands of milk and juice boxes sold. A tetrabrik container is 75% cardboard, 20% plastic and 5% aluminum, the latter the most durable litter of all, even probably outlasting glass in the environment. As Dos Pinos spokesperson Eyllem Fonseca told the daily paper La Nacion, the dairy only dipped its toe into recycling in 2005 and was content to only treat the waste produced within its own plant by the packaging of dairy products.

But in January of 2007, the cooperative conducted a pilot operation, enlisting the aid of selected schools whose student collected the discarded cartons. Encouraged by the results, the dairy has built larger warehouses and will embark next month on this noble venture. The building material, by the way, will withstand the tropical elements for 10 years and longer if used as interior wallboard.

The process of making recycled products is simple: The clean, dry cartons are delivered to the recycling plant where they are soaked to remove the cardboard, which can be used to make paper or even turned again into cardboard. The aluminum and plastic is then put into a mold where it is compressed and subjected to heat, well over twice the temperature of boiling water, for 25 minutes. The resulting material emerges from the mold with a smooth surface.

Dos Pinos will accept all brands of the cartons and can produce 455 tons of products per month. Wallboard and other products in the process may be curved by using a different mold. For now, Dos Pinos will use the above process, thus producing material that would otherwise be imported and reducing the amount of litter, a win-win situation. But the executives have their eye on a more sophisticated process used in Brazil where the plastic may be recycled and the separated aluminum reduced to saleable ingots.

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Environmentalists welcomed the news that, during a break in classes, school children in Santa Cruz canton in Guanacaste planted 520 trees around the main aquifers that provide water to several communities including Tamardindo Beach. But residents and deveopers at Tamrindo should applaud, as well as to support this movement.

The whole province is a victim of deforestation, product of 50 years of cutting the dry, slow-growing tropical lowland vegetation to make way for lucrative cattle production, reaching a peak in the 1970s. Pastures do not hold the rain as well as do deeply-rooted trees, whose leafy canopies also provide an umbrella to break the force of downpours. Trees do the best job to prevent erosion and flooding.

Moreover, cattle themselves, with their heavy weight on sharp hooves, cut up river banks, worsening an already devastating situation. A biologist of our acquaintance, Hugh Casey, once opined that the best way to keep Guanacaste from turning into a desert was to kill a cow, bury her, and plant a tree on her corpse. These factors have led to severe damage to water sources.

If the efforts of only 35 students seems like a prinprick against a raging rhinocerous, Cassie Rauser of the Tamarindo Environmental and Cultural Committee assures that many more reforestation efforts area planned. "This is the first effort in what is planned to be repeated shortly to offer better protection to water sources in this tourism district…" she said. Areas effected by these aquifers include Santa Rosa, Villareal, Tamarindo and El Llanito. <em>It is time people begin thinking in the long range. Government certainly has not and its plan to rob other communities of their water is not the answer.

by Rod Hughes

As the continued rise in petroleum prices threatens to imbalance Costa Rica’s foreign exchange, the government would like nothing better than for Ticos to think more about dumping their SUVs in favor of a hybrid car. Purdy Motors is all for that.

Purdy, a longtime fixture in the national motoring scene, is the only Costa Rican importer who had the foresight to bring in hybrid cars, notes an exclusive business story in the weekly The Tico Times. So you can have any kind of hybrid here as long as it is a Toyota Prius. From Purdy Motors.

Although Purdy has been importing the Prius since 2004, only about a hundred hybrids cruise the country so far, according to the importer’s marketing manager, Luis Mastroeni. One of the measures the Ministry of Energy and Environment has urged to cut imports of expensive petroleum are hybrids and electric cars. Mastroeni claims that Purdy is the only dealer in all of Latin America to see the handwriting on the wall and pay attention to hybrids.

Environment Minister Roberto Dobles would like further tax breaks on hybrids. Even now, the Prius buyer pays only a 34% Selective Consumption Tax as opposed to 52% for other vehicles. Still, Tico Times reporter Leslie Friday questioned whether many Ticos would pick up the Prius’s rather hefty price tag of $36,700.

Although the paper says that Dobles is interested in electric cars and thinks the nation’s electric grid can handle the extra load, no importer has yet to jump at the opportunity.

In other pretroleum crisis news, 60 heavy cargo trucks held a slowdown on the roads between Alajuela and Paseo Colon in San Jose to protest rising fuel prices, causing traffic jams that effected the entire metropolitan area. What the drivers of these semi-truck-trailers hoped to gain by blocking traffic, other than to inconvenience their fellow citizens, is hard to imagine. Certainly the government has no hold over OPEC and is, indeed, as concrned about the situation as anyone else.

by Rod Hughes

They say that love is blind, but the sexual drive can have the same result, at least if you are a crocodile in the Tarcoles River.

At least four out of every 15 of the fierce males in the river (known for its high population of the reptiles) are blind in one or both eyes. The culprit is not contamination of the water, or genetic defect or some rare disease, as scientists theorized for several years. They are simply love-struck.

Scientists have noted that the river contains two male crocodiles for every female. To mate and carry on their particular genetic code, the males clash violently, charging into each other and biting their opponent’s head or tail until one gives way under the battering and is driven off. The croc’s eyes, raised above the level of a rather flat head for seeing above the water when the rest of their long snouts and bodies are submerged, are thus vulnerable.

Occasionally, these battles result in death to one of the fighters, but a more likely result is injury. The thick skin of the reptile (once highly valued for shoe leather and still poached in some places but valued here as a tourist attraction on the Tarcoles River) usually heals, leaving only scars and a bitter memory. (Is it any wonder that the croc is noted for his ill temper?) Only the eyes are really at serious risk. For some reason, the left eye seems especially apt to be injured.

Crocodile specialist Juan Bolanos, a scientists at the National Autonomous University at Heredia, says the damaged eye appears totally white at first, but the pupil has been ruptured and soon the orb rots from within. Bolanos, who recently completed a study under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, says that crocodile fights are a normal survval mechanism, but here they are more violent than in many parts of the world. Of the estimated 150 crocs in the river, about 40 10-foot-long specimens are sexually active and the fighting occurs among these.

In a healthy population, there are two females for every male, so competition is not nearly as fierce, says Bolanos. To find out why the exact reverse is true of the Tarcoles, toxologist Thomas Rainwater took samples of river water for study, veterinarian Nick Millichamp examined eyes, while expert herptologist Brady Barr and Costa Rican biologist Luz Denia Barrantes studied other aspects of the mystery. (We cannot imagine giving an eye exam to a writhing, snapping 10-foot croc as Millichamp did! Gives a new slant to “scientific dedication.”)

Conclusion: Some young men might think the cool way to proclaim their love for a female is to use violence, but that’s a croc.

by Rod Hughes

Air quality in the capital declined last year from 2006, a recent report from the National Autonomous University at Heredia (UNA) clearly shows. The main villain is nitrogen dioxide generated from automobile exhausts, despite a marked improvement over several years due to better vehicle inspections.

The acceptable limit for such emissions is 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air but at many points tested by UNA scientists, the air contained from 40 to 50. Excessive contaminats are blamed for skin irritation, allergic reactions and, of course, respiratory problems.

The country has 1.2 million cars, trucks and buses circulating, as the average person is not surprised to find out because they all seem to be on one’s route when one wants to drive anywhere. Another contaminants are particles emitted from exhausts but these, according to INA’s Jose Rojas, who acceptable limit is 50 micrograms per cubic meter. But particles are up a tirfle but, probably due to Riteve’s vehicular inspections, are not exceeding limits.

At the press conference presenting the report, San Jose Mayor Johnny Araya, weighed in with extensive commentaries, suggesting that people should consider walking or riding bicycles. Araya, a presumptive National Liberation Party nomination candidate for president, is not the one to turn to for a solution, after his countless years as municipal executive and mayor. The capital’s sidewalks remain in as hazardous condition as when he first came on the political scene.

Besides better vehicular inspections, the government has tried to reduce contamination from vehicles stopped at intersections by installing so-call “smart” traffic lights to allow a smoother flow of traffic. While the Ministry of Transport claims it saves motorists millions of colones per year in fuel they do not burn waiting for the light to turn, it is unlikely to make a dent in the pollution. There are just too darned many cars out there and the National Insurance Institute says the number increases 8.5% per year.

by Rod Hughes

The price of a computer-savvy government is 13,000 tons of contaminants per year laid on the environment and the Environment Ministry has yet to put in place its plans to prevent the damage, according to a report in today’s daily La Nacion.

Contaminants include burned out monitors, scanners and photocopiers, toner, batteries and discarded cell phones, the report concludes. All contain heavy metals which can cause, according to Dr. William Bujan, hemotologist at Hospital Mexico, brain and liver damage, anemia, and bone marrow illnesses, especially if it seeps into ground water.

The toxic material includes cadmium from batteries, lead and lead acid. Eugenio Androvetto of the Ministry of Health, admits that no one has yet devise a plan of collection and disposal of these materials. And, Dr. Bujan adds, the slow accumulation of heavy metals makes illness caused by them difficult to diagnose.

Fortunately, two companies in the country do process this type of dangerous waste: Fortech, in Cartago, (Tel. 2573- 8634) processes 10 tons monthly. Servicios Ecologicos in Santa Ana also disposes of such materials. It may be contacted through Daniela Garcia (at the University Nacional at Heredia) by calling 2249-3052.

by Rod Hughes

The old National Stadium, which has had some explosive sports events and loud rock concerts, will be rocked by explosions of a different sort in a couple of weeks as demolition continues to make way for a China-financed $70 million 35,000-seat sports showplace. Crews will be using dynamite on the old prefabricated concrete east and west stands, after they found that the seats could not be recycled.

Although the stands were found to be deteriorated structurally, the natural turf is another matter. The grass is to be urooted carefully and replanted in the surrounding Sabana Park, a popular recreation place in downtown San Jose. Where the nation’s All Star soccer team once trod will be taken over by boys and overage, overweight men puffing along in pick-up matches, the latter risking injury and heart attacks.

President of the National Sports Council, Osvaldo Pandolfo, explained, “A structural engineer studied the stands and decided it would be extremely difficult to save them. Moreover, he determined that it would be a very serious risk to move them to a different site because they could cause an accident.”

Jose Alfredo Sanchez of the MECO construction company agreed that an order was issued to “demolish them because they suffer fissures and do not conform to the seismic code, therefore cannot be reinstalled in another place.” (This is a pity. Many other stadiums in the country are also substandard. A few years ago, wooden stands at Nicoya (Ganacaste) collapsed during a First Divsiion soccer game before the Guanacaste club moved its franchise to Escazu. Fortunately, no serious injuries occurred.)

Pandolfo said the stands had been promised to the Carmelita First Division club for a new stadium planned for Alajuela, but, due to the deterioration, it could not be done. But Carmleita club president Carlos Gonzalez said he had yet to be notified of the change and would wait until it is official before meeting with his directors to see what must be done. Obviously, constructing new stands from the ground up will add tremendously to the new stadium’s cost.