Cancún beach project suspended after environmentalist legal action

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 November 2009 22.41 GMT
Cancún is among Mexico's Caribbean beach resorts recently affected by shifting sands.
A huge project to replenish eroded beaches in Mexico's main Caribbean coastal resorts, including Cancún, has been suspended after legal action by environmentalists.
Campaigners claim the $75m (£45m) plan – involving taking 6.2m cubic metres from a sandbank just off Cozumel island, 50 miles from Cancún, to hotel beaches – is based on incomplete assessments.
Critics say dredging the sandbank will alter currents and damage ecosystems, including coral reefs and breeding grounds for species such as the queen conch. They also fear Cozumel will become more vulnerable to hurricanes. "It's absurd. We understand it is necessary to fill out the beaches but it needs to be done without sacrificing other places," said Alejandra Serrano of the Mexican Centre for Environmental Law.
But Rodrigo de la Pena, president of the Hotel Association, criticised the delay: "We cannot sell ourselves as a place of sun and sand, if we don't have the sand."
A federal judge ordered a review of the project last month just hours before the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, was due to launch the dredging. However, the same judge has now ordered activists to put down a 15m peso (£680,000) guarantee against loss of earnings incurred by project delays, to be paid if the final decision went against them. Unable to raise the money, campaigners have filed for an injunction to review the bond requirement.
Lupita Alvarez of the group Citymar, said: "If this doesn't work we will just have to go and put ourselves in front of the dredgers."
The depletion of the white-sand beaches (above) is often blamed on Hurricane Wilma but environmentalists blame high-rise hotels built on sand dunes. After Wilma, 800,000 cubic metres of sand were implanted at a cost of $19m, only to see the beaches washed away within months. The project relies on much more sand and artificial barriers.