Cancún Hoteliers Push to Reactivate Beach Recovery Trust

Cancún, Quintana Roo — José Chapur, honorary president of the Cancún Hotels Association, confirmed that a meeting with the state Environment and Ecology Department (SEMA) is scheduled for November to reactivate the Beach Recovery Trust and set in motion a sand replenishment project that already has funding secured.

Chapur said the environmental impact statement is finished and approved. The only remaining step is to restart the trust created for beach recovery so that joint work can begin.

He acknowledged the effort will take time, but stressed that planning must start now because the calendar has to be coordinated around hurricane season, sea turtle nesting and the removal of anti-sargassum barriers. Those constraints determine when a dredge and the other equipment needed for a project of this scale can be contracted, he said, noting the work resembles the 2009-2010 restoration.

Chapur estimated that the biggest advance in planning logistics would come next year.

Financing already lined up

On cost and funding, the hotel leader said fees for land reclaimed from the sea in the federal maritime-terrestrial zone have been paid since the previous recovery and have never been suspended. That money is earmarked for this project, he said.

He added that the earlier Banobras loan has already been repaid, opening another source of financing for the new effort. Three banks — Banamex, BBVA and Santander — are already interested and are willing to provide the resources with minimal paperwork, he said, because the recovery is funded through the tax itself.

The approved project would cover the entire hotel zone coastline of Cancún. It aims to build dunes at least two meters high or thick across dry beach widths of more than 40 meters, which could stabilize at about 20 meters wide and one meter high once currents redistribute the sand. Work would focus especially on the areas hit hardest by erosion.