Environment

Stolen beach? Mexico shuts Cancun coastal strip

by Barbara McPherson | July 31, 2009 at 02:49 pm

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Holiday makers on the fabled beaches of Cancun may be playing on stolen beaches. Today environmental enforcement officers backed by military sectioned off a strip of beach fronting the Gran Caribe Real Hotel and shut the coastal strip down.

The Mexican authorities claim that the Gran Caribe Real Hotel has illegally built a breakwater to prevent the natural migration of sand down the beach to other hotels as well as illegally using pumps to suction sand from the sea bed.

Today we made the decision to close this stretch of ill-gotten, illegally accumulated sand,” said Patricio Patron, Mexico’s attorney general for environmental protection. “This hotel was telling its tourists: ‘Come here, I have sand ... the other hotels don’t, because I stole it.”’

Patron said five people were detained in a raid for allegedly using pumps to move sand from the sea floor onto the beach in front of the Gran Caribe Real Hotel. The hotel is also suspected of illegally building a breakwater that impeded the natural flow of sand onto other hotels’ beaches, he said.

The Mexican government has spent millions of dollars to replenish the sand suctioned away from the famous Cancun beaches by Hurricane Wilma. The fix was temporary and much of the sand has migrated away. Some establishments in an attempt to recreate their pre-hurricane beaches of white sand have built breakwaters and vacuumed sand from the sea bed.
The beautiful white sandy beaches of the Cancun area are a big dollar draw for tourists.

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