Companies petition against expansion of neighboring Carolina landfill

By The Star Staff

The Municipality of Carolina (MAC) did not disclose the existence of environmentally sensitive areas during its permit renewal application to expand the city’s sanitary landfill, according to a recent court filing.

The Caribbean Golf Academy, which is located adjacent to the landfill, alleges that the city misrepresented and omitted important information regarding the San José mogotes mountain range, an aquifer, a system of caves and caverns, and other valuable natural resources native to the karst zone during the permit renewal and landfill expansion process, which received approval from the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER).

In a claim filed last Thursday opposing the renewal of the permit and the expansion of the sanitary landfill system (SRS), the golf academy demanded that the municipality be required to fund an independent environmental impact statement (EIS) to explore alternative options to the permit renewal. The academy’s suggested alternatives should include the restoration of the flora and fauna, as well as the cultural values of the affected area within the buffer zone, along with measures recommended by previous studies regarding the hydrogeology of the site.

The golf academy is part of Hacienda Campo Rico, and both entities are neighboring businesses negatively impacted by the landfill’s planned expansion into the designated buffer zone -- an area that the municipality itself requested that the island Planning Board designate for resource conservation due to its high ecological value. In support of that request, the municipality expropriated a total of 34 acres (35 cuerdas) of land.

“The MAC and its agents are hiding information, while the JCA (formerly the Environmental Quality Board) and later the DNER are ignoring the fact that the MAC landfill, originally an open-field operation, is situated in karst terrain and is secretly expanding its operations into land that was intended to serve as a buffer zone,” said Patricio Martínez Lorenzo, the attorney for the Caribbean Golf Academy.