Officials began investigating the Hotel Occidental Grand Papagayo this week to determine whether the 169-room hotel is pumping wastewater into the ocean fronting a coral reef.
Eduardo Céspedes, director of Health in Carillo, said inspectors from the Health Ministry, the Liberia Prosecutors Office and the Costa Rican Water and Sewer Institute (AyA) took seawater samples for testing Tuesday.
Results could be available as early as next week, he said.
Like the Allegro Papagayo, a neighboring hotel that was closed last week when it was discovered pumping sewage into an estuary, the Grand Papagayo has been accused by its neighbors of pumping wastewater into ocean waters fronting a coral reef near Playa Buena, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste.
Both hotels are part of the government-run Papagayo Tourism Project, the largest such development in Central America.
After The Tico Times' series of reports on the Occidental hotels (see http://www.ticotimes.net/topstory.htm ), word spread quickly across such well-known Internet travel forums as The Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor.com.
Prospective visitors panicked, and some that had visited the Allegro Papagayo, even after it had been ordered closed on Jan. 31, reportedly took ill.
“My husband became very ill Sunday night Feb. 3 after having dinner at the buffet,” wrote Lisa McIntyre, of California, in a letter addressed to well-known Internet travel agencies Orbitz.com and Expedia.com. |
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