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Tamarindo Businesses Shut Down Over Permits
Jan 8, 2008
(Source www.the beachtimes.com, news, edition January 04, 2008)
Tamarindo Businesses Shut Down Over Permits
The Ministry of Health has closed 11 businesses in Tamarindo because they did not have the required health permit.
In some cases businesses were operating with no adequate coverage for solid waste and sludge.
The closures were part of an operation by the Ministry to map Tamarindo’s sewage system, and get a better idea why water readings taken in August showed unacceptable levels of bacteria.
Dr Juan Luis Sánchez, Director of the Ministry of Health in Santa Cruz, said there were 240 different establishments registered as having health permits in the town, but to date, the Ministry had only been able to identify 149, using Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking.
“Of the 149, we only were able to evaluate 120,” Dr Sánchez said. “Twenty-nine will remain pending since, for different reasons, it was impossible to evaluate them.”
More than half the businesses evaluated were given sanitary orders because of problems relating to solid and liquid waste management. Businesses had about four weeks to rectify problems.
“Right now we are doing a follow up to the sanitary orders,” Dr Sánchez said. “We need to corroborate that the establishments which were given orders have complied with what was requested or corrected the problems.”
Some businesses are understood to have appealed the orders, while others have asked for more time.
A team of health inspectors and engineers have been in Tamarindo for more than three weeks undertaking the evaluations. The operation follows a series of water quality tests in August by the Costa Rican water authority Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos Y Alcantarillados (or AyA), which showed levels of bacteria were hazardously high, jeopardizing the health of swimmers.
The inspection, which covered 13 discharge points along and near about two kilometers of the beach, found all but one of the points — the Tamarindo estuary — to have unacceptably high levels of fecal coliform and Escherichia coli, commonly known as E. coli, bacteria.
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