To the Owner of Las Torres del Coco studio,
I have a good news and a bad news for you.
First a good news - Grupo Mapache which is in charge of construction of the complex is planning to do the closing for Las Torres in a month. That means that all units will be transferred first in to the name of the our main corporation and as it's quite hard to arrange for all unit owners to come for closing at one time, we will be doing the closing with individual owners on their schedule.
I will let you know when the dates are confirmed and will email you official notice of readiness for closing at which point you are supposed to pay the balance as per agreement.
Now the bad news:
All of you have probably heard about problems with water supply in Playas del Coco. The Trust company was created two years ago which collected over 8 million dollars from all developers to build a new water pipeline. The Trust has an agreement with the local authorities and state water company that after the new system is finished it will be transferred to the state company for maintenance and management.
The water is going to come from a few water-wells, including 3 wells in Sardinal area (about 7 km from Coco), all works are 80 % done and to finish it, the workers would need 2-3 months.
But the people living in Sardinal arranged huge protest rallies at the beginning of the year (March-April) claiming that developers are going to take all water from their region and there is not enough reserves to last even few year. The government had to offer something to the locals and appointed a new study of the water bearing region which lasted until now.
A meeting of the local representatives and government officials is scheduled for November 9, 2008, where the group of engineers and scientists will report their findings. From our source we know that the findings are positive and there's not obstacles to carry on the works, so hopefully after that meeting a go ahead will be given to the workers.
The bad news for us is that there's no new water connections available now and the water company will be accepting new applications for the connections only when the conflict is solved.
Even worse news is that the new connection is going to cost a LOT - at the moment the figure which has been quoted by the water company is US$2,800 per connection, including installation of the water meter.
I also have one unit in the complex which I keep for my kid and personally think that it is a straightforward blackmail, but that's how it is. The state water company has a monopoly and there's no alternative supplier.
There's only two options:-
1. Everyone gets individual connection and individual water meter and in that case has to pay the cost of connection;
2. I am trying to get the specifications for the new water system or at least the idea of what pressure they are going to maintain in the system. If the system pressure is going to be more than 2 bars, one meter could coupe with three studio units, so we could try to get away with two meters - one for the three ground floor units and one for the three 1st floor units and in that case the owners of the three units connected to one meter would split the water bill three ways.
Water is still very cheap in Costa Rica and average bill for the units where people live throughout the year is never goes up more than $10-12 per month.
We need to make a collective decision within next 2-3 weeks, so please let me know your thoughts on the issue as soon as possible.
Best regards,
S. Galkine