This text was originally published in Nosara, a monthly newsletter in which we dig deeper into stories and news from that diverse and complex district. If you don’t want to miss any edition, subscribe by clicking here.
Epic Nosara, a new real estate project in the district, makes the most appealing promises on the market in the area: six luxury villas with pools tucked away in the so-called jungle (that is becoming more and more fragmented), next to the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge and just steps away from Pelada Beach.
The project’s website, available only in English, describes the place as an “unparalleled escape into beachfront 5-star luxury.” What the Epic Nosara website leaves out is that the project currently lacks water use approval for both its construction phase and to supply the villas once they open.
The Voice of Guanacaste confirmed this with official information provided by the Playas de Nosara Water and Sewer Systems Administration Association (Spanish acronym: ASADA) and the Water Administration of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE).
The Voice had access to the building permit applications for five of the villas located in the Pelada Beach community, registered in the name of Pacific Trust and Escrow Services Limited, as documented in the National Registry, on the billboards placed outside the construction site, in the files registered with the Municipality of Nicoya, the Water Administration office, the Environmental Technical Secretary (Spanish acronym: SETENA) and the Playas de Nosara ASADA.
Despite lacking this mandatory requirement, the Municipality of Nicoya’s Construction Control and Public Works Department approved the construction permits for the five properties –between April 9 and May 8, 2024, Currently, almost a year later, none of the construction sites have yet been approved for legal access to water.
The Municipality of Nicoya itself has established that for permits to be approved, applicants (individuals or legal entities) need to include potable water use approval as a requirement. Article 117 of the construction regulations of the National Institute of Housing and Urban Development (Spanish acronym: INVU) also states that “every building must have water service available, so the interested party must process the document proving this,” either from AyA (Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers), the corresponding ASADA, or from a well, officially recognized by MINAE’s water department.
On Wednesday, March 26, one day after the municipality confirmed that they had granted the construction permits, The Voice went to the Municipality of Nicoya with the goal of asking César Espinoza, head of the Construction Control Department, why they had approved these permits without water feasibility. However, the mayor’s office indicated that he was on sick leave.
On Thursday, March 27, we sent our questions to the emails of Mayor Carlos Armando Martínez and the press and construction departments, but as of the deadline for this issue, they had not responded about how they justified issuing the permits without water feasibility.
The Voice tried to contact Steven Ferris Quesada, manager and legal representative of Pacific Trust and Escrow, on several occasions since last Tuesday, with phone calls, messages to his WhatsApp and personal email to ask him where the water they are using to build the complex comes from, how they can guarantee water availability for when the houses are in use, and to ask about the permit details for the sixth villa (because we only located five permit records), but we received no response.
His cell phone number was answered by someone who identified herself as his assistant, who claimed that Ferris could not take the call because he had left the country. However, the Costa Rican General Department of Immigration and Alien Services recorded Ferris’s last immigration movement as an entry into the country, not an exit, as the assistant indicated. As of the deadline for this article, the developer had not responded to the questions sent to his email and WhatsApp, nor to messages communicated through his assistant and an office colleague.
We also called phone numbers registered in the name of his father, Steven Ferris Aguilar, who also holds the title of assistant manager at Pacific Trust and Escrow, but there was no answer.
Although the project doesn’t have legal authorization for water use, from the gravel road that will connect the villas to the beach, it is possible to observe that significant progress has been made on the construction of the buildings. Some of the villas are already up for pre-sale, with prices reaching $5,800,000, according to the Century 21 real estate website.
According to the project’s website, the grand opening will be in November of 2025.
The five lots where Epic Nosara is being developed measure a total of approximately 10,000 square meters (about 2.5 acres), according to information from the National Registry.Photo: Luis Diego Alfaro
ASADA did not provide water
Pacific Trust and Escrow Services Limited requested a water connection from the Playas de Nosara ASADA in June of 2023, confirmed the president of the community aqueduct, Elizabeth Adams.
The company’s application was for five houses with swimming pools and a community center spread across five lots, with a total of 32 bedrooms for an occupancy of 74 people.
Adams specified to The Voice that the ASADA has not approved the application. According to the president, before approving water authorization letters, the developer must present a technical study detailing the amount of water required, as stated in official document GSD-UEN-GAR-2020-05433 from the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA).
To date, the company has not yet fulfilled this requirement.
This project never submitted a Technical Study to the ASADA…. Since neither the ASADA nor AyA approved this project, I would suggest asking the municipality what is being built, since we are not involved,” Adams suggested.
In addition, due to the increased demand for water resources in the community, this ASADA currently does not have the water capacity to issue new water permits, as revealed by The Voice of Guanacaste in the June 29, 2024 edition of the Nosara newsletter, based on document No. GSD-UEN-GAR-2024-01121 from AyA.
The developer also submitted documentation to SETENA to obtain the environmental viability certification for each of the properties. Although the institution did approve the environmental viability procedures for the original larger property — which was later subdivided into four more — the applications for the smaller subdivided parcels were archived because “the proposed activity doesn’t require environmental viability,” SETENA explained to The Voice.
Pacific Trust doesn’t have permission to use a well
MINAE’s water department approved a permit for the company developing Epic Nosara to drill a well on property 5-00221651. However, the scope of the authorization only allows them to dig the well, but does not authorize the use of its water, explained the coordinator of the institution’s North Pacific Tempisque Hydrological Unit, engineer Leonardo Solano.
“First, we issue the drilling permit…. Once they drill, then they submit the studies to see if they found water or not. If they did find water, we now continue with the concession, but until the well is drilled and we have all the information, we can’t continue with the process,” Solano commented.
The company didn’t request the drilling permit until October 21, 2024, six months after the approval of the building permits by the Municipality of Nicoya, according to an analysis of the water department’s file 25730-P and information provided by the municipality.
In addition, according to the water department engineer, once they have obtained the water use concession for a well, that well can only supply water to a maximum of two properties. The only exception is if the real estate project is registered with the National Registry as a condominium. However, The Voice confirmed with the registry that these lots are not in that category. This means that even if the company had obtained the permit to use the water, the well they drilled would not be able to supply the five Epic Nosara properties.
The Water Department cannot grant well concessions to more than two properties (if the property is not under the set of rules for a condominium),” commented engineer Leonardo Solano.
Editor’s note: The penultimate paragraph of this investigative story was slightly edited on March 31, 2025 at 12:30 p. m. to modify a line that could lend itself to inaccurate interpretations. It originally stated that “the well drilled is located less than one kilometer (0,6 miles) from the sea”, when the correct is that the location of where the well was requested to be drilled is less than one kilometer from the sea”. The Voice of Guanacaste can not assure the well is drilled or not, because according to the records of Water Department, as stated originally in this text, they have not been notified of such action. This modification also applies to the version sent to subscribers of the Nosara newsletter, whose edition is prevented by Mailchimp, the platform used for newsletter management.
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