by Rod Hughes
UPDATE—Power outages continued throughout the country this week due to a decision by the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) to ration electricity to make up a lack caused by low water levels (according to ICE) in hydroelectric dams around the country. The blackouts, unlike the one April 19 touched off by the explosion of a circuit at Cachi Reservoir causing a nationwide domino effect, are regional, lasting from two and a half to four hours.
(ICE promised shorter outages during the weekend and then only in some sectors.)
Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias, acting in the President’s name, has declared the energy crunch a national crisis, although how this will put Humpty Dumpty together again is not explained in detail other than a call to the Legislative Assembly (congress) to give ICE sufficient funds to finish several hydroelectric projects in progress.
Business leaders and industrialists, through the union of private enterprise chambers, have severely criticized ICE for not confronting the problem sooner Certainly, many were hurt by the unexpected blackout of more than an hour April 19. The Tico Times reported last Friday that Intel, the electronics giant, lost 150,000 units on the production line at their plant here.
ICE, after promising that rationing would not be required, began the so-called “rolling outages” after ARESEP, the country’s rate regulator, turned down a 23% increase in electric rates, granting a lower percentage and then rescinding even that after the April 19 blackout.
ARESP said ICE demanded far more than it needed. ICE responded that they had no money to pay for diesel to run their thermal generators to make up the gap caused by their faltering hydroelectric output—and began the rolling blackouts.
Many observers suspect that the frequent blackouts are a power play (no pun intended) by ICE to pressure ARESEP to grant all it asks.
But there is little doubt that the country must update its generating capacity in the near future to meet a precipitously rising energy demand.

By Amanda Roberson Tico Times Staff
Police have discovered that some of the 56 Chinese migrants who were discovered lost at sea off the Pacific beach of Playa Guiones Saturday paid as much as $35,000 to be transported from their country without knowing their final destination, explained Vice-Minister of Public Security Ana Durán at a press conference yesterday.

While investigating these shipwrecked migrants, who were recently brought to a shelter in San José, police discovered that six of them were carrying round-trip airline tickets from China to Bogota, Colombia, with layovers in Hong Kong and Paris, Durán said.

From Bogota, they were taken by truck to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and from there, they headed north in a boat that broke down in Costa Rican waters.

Police suspect the three Ecuadorians and two Peruvians aboard the shipwrecked boat were “coyotes” transporting the Chinese to the United States or Canada, common destinations for migrants from poor countries, Durán said. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating these five people.

The Chinese aboard “weren’t clear where they were going,” she said, explaining that the migrants’ passports had been taken away from them and they had been sedated in Ecuador before getting on the boat.

Authorities are in the process of trying to fly the 16 who have tickets back to Colombia. Police are contacting airlines to find out if the other 40 also have tickets; if they don’t, Costa Rica will go through “standard immigration procedures” to deport them.

In the meantime, the 50 adults in the group are being held at a police shelter, and the six minors are being sheltered by the Child Welfare Office (PANI).

It costs Costa Rica about ¢1.2 million ($2,300) per day to provide food and shelter to these migrants, and the legal processes to deport them cost as much as $5,000 per person, Durán said.

These are “huge costs for the country,” she said. “We are a country that protects human rights, but these situations are arising that are draining the resources we have,” she said.