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Came across this item this a.m. and wondering what the board members think about this:
U.S. Diplomats: “Costa Rica Is No Paradise ”
http://www.nacion.com/2011-03-20/Investigacion/NotasSecundarias/Investigacion2719563.aspx
don’t get me going on this topic! between the trash on the sides of the road and the pollution, it’s enough to make you sick — literally. there’s a beach that’s popular with all the gringos but you won’t catch me in the water there because just a hundred yards north of this lovely beach is the mouth of the Barranca, one of the most polluted rivers in CR — polluted with industrial waste and human waste. the only thing that consoles me is that Nicaragua has a WORSE garbage problem which you are hit in the face with the minute you cross the borders. stiff fines for polluting would be a deterrent, but good luck!!
[quote=”bogino”]Came across this item this a.m. and wondering what the board members think about this:
U.S. Diplomats: “Costa Rica Is No Paradise ”
There is truth in the article and I can’t see where the Japanese loan needed to be debated.
We have a small creek that runs along our property but we are near the source and those who live above are on septic systems. I wouldn’t live near the beaches to save me.
This is WEIRD! The linked I posted morning when I started this topic:
http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2011/march/20/costarica11032001.htm
was somehow changed (not by me) to essentially the same story but in Spanish. How does that happen (just curious)?
I live in La Carpentara in Tres Rios, I asked my mother in-law where the water goes after we flush the toilet… she replied down the road and into the river of course…hahahaha
Of course I have always said this, Costa Rica is a environmentally friendly country just don’t look behind the bushes you might find a refrigerator or two…hahahahah
And why is it that when ever you look at the rivers in town that they look like a trash dump?I always remember the old T.V. commercials with the Indian crying back in the states… Here you can imagine the ticos laughing as they are pitching their tires off the bridge..hahahaha
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM]Indian Crying on youtube[/url]
I had to show this to my wife and she laughed because she know that here it wouldn’t work.I traveled from Desamparados to Tibas 2 weeks ago and went over a bridge and below the river was littered with all kinds of trash.
Saw some vacant (empty) lot’s with all kinds of construction leftovers.
Around LA Rotunda next to “El Parque de la Paz” was the same thing, trash dumped at night in full view for everyone to see.
The growth “EXPLOSION” that CR has gone through caught the Govm. by a complete surprise.
Amazingly; the Ticos’ understand this problem and are slowly demanding the Covm. to fix these and other ones but the internal deficit is growing every year.
The answer the “Diputados” have is to raise the sales tax from 13% to 15%.
what i don’t understand is how it doesn’t bother THEM to look at garbage stewn along the roadways, in clumps in an empty field, or littering the river banks? what the hell is the matter with these people? cross the border into nicaragua and you see mounds and mounds of plastic all along the roadways, in peoples’ yards, in the streets of small towns. i was so horrified by this mess that i asked at least a half dozen locals why they do this? we have no trash cans, they said. go the the local farmer’s market in masaya (wheen i went there wasn’t a gringo in sight) and you have to kick the trash out of the way to get to various stalls. as bad as the trash problem is in costa rica, there are places where it’s worse. i was so incensed when i returned (costa rica seems clean by comparison) that i wanted to write danny ortega a letter and tell him his revolution was a failure if he couldn’t inculcate his people with a sense of pride about their country. we took the chicken bus to the market one day and the guy in front of me tossed his coke bottle and candy wrapper out the window. he’s lucky i didn’t smack him in the back of the head! the popular gringo beach i mentioned — oooo—eeee, go there on a day when the water is turbulent and you will see all kinds of medical waste floating around. but that doesn’t stop people from swimming there. ugh you judge a country by the way they deal with their trash. there needs to be a huge indoctrination program in latin america to teach people not to consume and dump. outlawing plastic bags would be a start — they just did this in italy. the world is overrun with plastic — go to nicaragua, or drive from cabo san lucas to todos santos where there are millions of plastic bags along the roadway.
Ticos’ are not blind and their middle class and up have traveled outside the national country to other places, they marvel at the security, roads and services when they my wife’s family visit us in Florida and they compare the good things and the bad too.
But they have BIG problems with the Economic and Financial growth that has happened in the last 20 years. EPA, the hardware store is (foreign) Colombia owened and so are many other Costa Rican corporations.
Besides there is a large amount of outside $$ invested, some clean and others NOT. What I found incredible is the Arias administration opening the door of CR to the Chinese Gov. and all for a National Stadium (Chinese workers and Chinese materials) and I thought that if a CR worker could do any work a foreigner could not take his job?? figure that one out.
In the meantime; the mes in el puente Virilla the new Autopista (Sol), el puerto de Limon with the Dutch proposing a new one $480,000 million $$. The hydro plant at REVENTAZON which will cost 1,200 MILLION $$.
LOT’s of $$ are going into CR because it is a very secure investment. Try doing that in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador. Only Panama and CR are safe to invest in Central America.
The innocent CR we knew 20 years ago is being transformed by massive outside investment and with these actions come some good and bad consecuences.
And if you live in CR get ready to face the reality of the changes that are there and coming your way, some will be ugly by your standards.
more to come
Look at any nation as it becomes more developed and you’ll find many negatives as well as positives.
The one thing that really stands out for me is the size of the Ticos. On my first trip to Costa Rica fifteen years ago the women all seemed to be slim and gorgeous, today there are a lot of very overweight Ticos…
Gallo pinto for breakfast every morning is great while you’re doing hard physical work all day but affects the body differently if you’re sitting at a desk in a call-center!
No doubt the longevity numbers for Costa Rica will start to decline as it becomes more “developed…”
From an environmental standpoint Costa Rica certainly has grown rapidly and there’s a ton of work to be done to live up to it’s “environmentally friendly” and “no artificial ingredients” image but having said that, does anybody actually care what the US Ambassador or any other US or British politician says anymore?
All of this concern over human excrement in the environment is tragically amusing after reading this morning about the recent attack on Libya with “112 Tomahawk Missiles, which carry around 360kg of depleted uranium in each missile… this makes up to the current time a total of around 40,320 kg of depleted uranium (112 X 360) that has now entered the Libyan and World environment….”
Most people have no idea that “depleted uranium munitions used by the U.S. military are causing one of the greatest environmental nightmares in the history of the world.”
And they’ve just begun…
“Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine. Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings.”
[ http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_greatest_enviomental_horrors.htm ]
Human excrement in the rivers of Costa Rica is unpleasant but it doesn’t have a half life of 4.5 billion years and won’t be deforming and killing people all over the world for ever!
Scott
except that diarrheal illnesses caused by contaminated water are the 6th leading cause of death worldwide.
[quote=”maravilla”]except that diarrheal illnesses caused by contaminated water are the 6th leading cause of death worldwide.[/quote]
. . . apparently not for long . . .
ugh! will they not be content until they give each and every one of us cancer with this SH%*? i’m going for nap. it’s just too depressing — contaminated everything, starving children, adults, and animals, people suffering immensely with half the world population trying to survive on $2.00 or less a day, and the US spends billions on useless stupid wars.
I don’t understand why Ticos can gateher for Japan but cannot protest the trash debacle. The leaders mimic the quality of the rest of the services here. Children playing grown up games.
This is not a new issue here… you have to understand that branding Costa Rica environmentally friendly is just like when they used to have commercials telling Ticos to smile when a tourist drove by. My wife told me back in the 80’s they used to have commercials showing Ticos how to be friendly to tourist. All of this is marketing.. the Ticos don’t care unless it effects their pockets.
As for the pollution…. this is normal around the world! Most other countries don’t have the laws or the standards like the U.S. or some EU countries. Its all about money!!! Does anyone have a couple of billion to give us to clean up the crap here?
If they do I know a couple of Ticos that need some new Jacuzzis! hahaha
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