Playa del Carmen, Q.R. — The Secretariat of Sustainable Environment and Climate Change has filed a legal complaint against a Playa del Carmen hotel. The complaint was filed after the hotel began to use heavy machinery to extract sand from the subsoil for its hotel beach area.
On Monday, María de Lourdes Várguez Ocampo, head of the Secretariat for Sustainable Environment and Climate Change of Solidaridad, said the legal complaint has been filed with the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa).
According to Ocampo, the legal complaint was filed against the Grand Hyatt Hotel in central Playa del Carmen for the extraction of sand it is doing in its beach area. She says although the hotel has obtained permits to carry out the work, they are concerned about the environmental impact.
Ocampo says the permit was issued by the Secretariat for Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) in Mexico City, however, she is criticizing the sand extraction and the hotel’s previous project of the installation of geotubes, referring to it as a “horrendous thing”.
The Secretaría de Medio Ambiente Sustentable y Cambio Climático for Solidaridad says now, the hotel is extracting sand from the subsoil through hoses connected to pumps. The extraction process consists of accumulating the extracted sand and then redistributing it on the beachfront of the hotel using heavy machinery.
Ocampo says since the Grand Hyatt Hotel has all the paperwork in order, she is not confident that the legal complaint filed with Profepa (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente) will go anywhere given the authorization they were granted by Semarnat (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales).
Ocampo says their beach erosion project of sand extraction is likely to continue for the rest of the year, adding that her office does not have the authority to stop it. She has reported that the Semarnat office is Cancun is also in disapproval of the project, which was granted permission from a Mexico City office.
It is the second legal complained filed by the municipal office against the PDC Grant Hyatt. In May, the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente Sustentable y Cambio Climático filed a complaint against the same hotel after obtaining permits in Mexico City to install geotubes in front of their hotel.
