The El Charco del Ingenio civil association filed a complaint with the State Environmental and Land Management Attorney’s Office seeking action regarding the construction of a three-story building for an educational institution in the San Miguel de Allende Ecological Preservation Zone (ZPE) by the state government.
They have been waiting for a response from the municipal government for a year.
César Arias, president of the AC’s board of trustees, also reported that they have been waiting for a year from the municipal government regarding their request for the return of the loan for the core area of the ZPE, known as Landeta Park, which includes the property occupied by the CETAC building, currently under expansion.
“Landeta Park is just over 30 hectares and has been declared a core area, so it is a conservation zone where urban development cannot take place (…) this property has suffered various damages that we have pointed out at the time,” he shared.
The president of Charco del Ingenio stated that in 2009, they were asked to transfer the existing lease because there was a UNAM project to create a Climate Change Research Center that would occupy three hectares of the site, which was never implemented “due to a lack of will,” Arias said.
“The park came under the jurisdiction of the municipality, and since then, disaster has befallen us. There were a series of erratic decisions and a phenomenon of neglect that threatened the work we had done for so many years, and we see how it’s going down the drain,” he indicated.
In 2017, the municipality handed over these three hectares to the Guanajuato Department of Education for the construction of a Technological Studies Center in Continental Waters No. 15, which, according to the association, was designed as an institution to prepare young people for environmental issues.
“We see that CETAC’s curriculum is tourism and gastronomy, or serving the vineyards and Bachoco, so who is going to train the technicians who will address the water issues that are already a crisis in San Miguel?” he questioned.
The complaint
The civil association filed a complaint with the POET due to the environmental impact that the CETAC expansion is having on the area: “There is already a building that is like a giant white shoebox, and even closer to Landeta Park, they are building a second three-story building.”
César Arias reported that there is a visual and ecological impact because the institution is causing disturbances to the fauna, in addition to setting a precedent that will cause more damage in the future.
“The project is terrible because the impact is multiplying. It’s in an Ecological Preservation Zone, and we’re waiting for a response from the government and trying to mitigate it, so that they do something. And we’re taking advantage of the opportunity to develop a curriculum linked to the wetland and the botanical garden, because they don’t have one at all. That’s our demand,” he said.
Waiting for a loan
César Arias explained that, a year ago, they asked the municipality to return the loan, since the mayor himself, Mauricio Trejo, had offered it to them three years ago.
“To finalize that offer, we formally requested it. A year went by, and they didn’t resolve the issue, and they started to issue delays. We’ve worked for a year on coordinates, polygonals, agreements, and contracts, and they keep putting us off, which makes us think there’s no will to hand over the park to us,” he said.
Source: periodicocentral
