Mexican Officials Reject San Quintin Bay Resort

Mexican environmental officials have rejected a controversial proposal for a tourist resort on San Quintin Bay, a virtually untouched inlet 185 miles south of the U.S. border that is a winter destination for migratory geese and home to a budding oyster and clam harvesting industry.

The $700-million-plus project, called Cabo San Quintin, was given a negative environmental assessment by the federal National Ecology Institute, agency spokesman Marco Sanchez Colin said Monday. The Mexico City-based agency reviews the environmental impact of projects proposed in undeveloped zones.

Reasons for the negative ruling were not made public Monday and top agency officials involved in the review were unavailable.

Under Mexican law, the developers can appeal the decision immediately to the agency or revise the proposal.

Opponents, who said the resort would harm a sensitive waterway, hailed the decision as a triumph for efforts to safeguard Baja California’s scenic coastline, which has undergone rapid development in recent years. The Mexican government last year turned down a proposal for a smaller trailer-home development on a different spot on the bay.

“Only very, very prudent and really sustainable development should be allowed,” said Alfonso Aguirre, part owner of a mollusk farm on the inlet--the only oyster-exporting bay in Mexico clean enough to meet U.S. food standards.

Developers said they had not yet received official word of the decision. Project spokesman Harrison Fagg, an architect based in Billings, Mont., said a lawyer and another of the project’s principals would be in Mexico City today to discuss the matter with environmental officials.

“I doubt that it’s totally and completely finalized,” Fagg said. “We’ll see what happens.”

The developers proposed building eight hotels, three golf courses, condominiums and other residences and a 350-slip marina on a seven-mile-long peninsula at the mouth of the bay.

The project sought to bring large-scale tourism to a region that boasts just a handful of small lodges for Southern Californians who brave a four-hour drive from the border to hunt and fish. The sponsors promised 20,000 new and spinoff jobs and wages of $4 an hour, five times the minimum wage. Proponents included some community leaders and residents who say tourism offers a future alternative to agriculture, which is the region’s dominant industry but faces long-term questions over water supplies.

Environmentalists on both sides of the border loudly protested the plans. They charged that large-scale building would spoil the eco-friendly shellfish industry and destroy a key habitat for thousands of Pacific black brant geese from Russia and Alaska.

Activists said the bay needs official protection against building. “This is only buying us time. This does not save the bay,” said Alan Harper, U.S. co-chairman of a binational environmental group called pro esteros.