Playa del Carmen, Q.R. — After much debate, the federal government says Sac Tun has finally agreed to convert the pit outside Playa del Carmen into tourist usages. On Friday, the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández, made the announcement official.
He said that the Mexican government and U.S. company Vulcan Materials, reached an agreement that will see the Calica pit (renamed Sac Tun in 2019) transformed into several things including tourist usages.
In a press conference from Veracruz, the federal official explained that after a Thursday meeting with legal representatives, the U.S. company accepted the offer of the government to change the land use used to extract stone materials and convert it for tourists activities.
The federal official explained that the government agreed to extend the permit for the subsidiary of the US mining company Vulcan Materials to continue extracting while it promised to use its land for the construction of a cruise port and a Maya Train station.
“We met with the Vulcan representative and he has already accepted the proposal. They are going to make a natural park. Semarnat will go in next week to do a survey and determine the density. It was agreed that the material that had been extracted will be able to be removed, exported.
“They were given a permit first for two months, which is going to be increased in terms of law up to three years,” explained López.
“They are going to do expansion work in the port to make it a kind of cruise port. It was also agreed that there will be an inspection to determine if the material they have can be used in the Maya Train. They agree to donate a part of the land so that a station could be built there,” he added.
The option for the pit to be converted into a natural area was one given by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador earlier this year when he ordered the company to stop excavating. In turn, the U.S. company filed a lawsuit against the Mexican government.