MEXICO CITY — A hotel project in northern Mexico has stalled following a series of legal complaints that it failed to meet environmental standards, which would have protected coastal ecosystems and the local fishing economy. The Tres Santos hotel project in Baja California Sur will have to conduct new environmental impact studies in order to obtain permits that it failed to comply with when breaking ground nearly a decade ago, resulting in the destruction of wetlands and a clash with local fishermen worried about their livelihoods. “We want our rights and our interests to be protected and to be respected,” said John Moreno, an attorney who filed multiple lawsuits against the project. “We want the law to be strictly enforced and the environment to be respected, and that requires them to respect the wetlands, that requires them to respect the dunes.” Developers planned the hotel for the town of Todos Santos, where many residents rely on fishing and tourism for their livelihoods. In 2014, Black Creek Group, a Colorado-based real estate company, began consulting with residents about the multi-million-dollar development project, including three hotels, commercial venues, a 400,000-liter water tank and over 4,000 residential homes — capable of housing nearly the entire population of Todos Santos at the time. At first, talks between the two sides were going well, Moreno said. But as development progressed, residents saw that the environmental impact would be worse than what had originally been described to them. Some wetlands were filled in and rivers and…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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