Watchdog unit rips process leading to Sardinal pipeline
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Contraloría de la República released Monday a scathing critique of the controversial Sardinal-Playas del Coco water line project and said that it has discovered serious faults and omissions in the legal process.
The Contraloría ordered the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados to begin steps to void the estimated 4,127 permits for water service issued in the area on the strength of the proposed water line.
The Contraloría also ordered the Secretaria Tecnica National Ambiental, the environmental watchdog for the Ministerio de Ambiente, Energía y Telecommunicaciones, to begin administrative hearings for those employees who approved the water line without completing all the legal steps.
The report is bad news for developers in the Playas del Coco area. They had chipped in $8 million to build the line to bring water to the Pacific beach town. However, residents in Sardinal, encouraged by environmentalists and students from the Central Valley, objected to the project that they thought would take water from their town.
Monday the Poder Judicial released a Sala IV constitutional court decision that said a full-scale water study would have to be done in the beach communities with particular attention to the aquifers below ground.
The Contraloría said that water availability permits never should have been issued on the strength of the proposed line. It also said that there were technical faults, including the fact that the contractor did not pay a 1 percent tax on construction.
The agency said that permits which are needed to obtain a building permit should not have been issued until the water line project was inspected and accepted. And the Contraloría said that the project should not have been authorized without detailed studies of the aquifers involved in Sardinal.