In 2012, the coastal regulatory plan for Sámara, a district of Nicoya, seemed to be in its final stages. At least, that was the impression given by the then coordinator of the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone of the Nicoya Municipality, Juan Carlos Oviedo.
“We are going to start granting concessions to the people (on the coast of Sámara) again,” he assured La Voz more than 10 years ago. The local government and the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (Spanish acronym: ICT) had begun working on it since 2005.
Today, nearly 20 years later, the plan has not reached the community, and the Maritime-Terrestrial Zone (MTZ) of Sámara continues to be governed by one published in 1981. Since 2023, the municipality has been working, for the third time, on a new version of the instrument.
The MTZ is a 200-meter-wide strip along the coast. The MTZ is divided into two zones: 50 meters of public zone—the area closest to the sea—where any type of development is prohibited, and 150 meters of restricted zone.
A Coastal Regulatory Plan is a document with a map of the area (a kind of map) that establishes the rules and specifies the locations within the restricted zone where the municipality can grant commercial, tourism, and even residential concessions. It also indicates which sites should be designated for conservation.
Currently, the plan in effect in the district, dating from 1981, only covers the areas of Cangrejal, Sámara Centro, Matapalo, El Torito, and Bajo Cambutes. Beyond excluding parts of the district, the plan is outdated. One reason for this is that the National Geographic Institute (Spanish acronym: IGN) relocated the boundary markers in 1998, which are the indicators that sectorize the limit between the restricted and public zones.
We ventured a bit further inland (into the public zone), which caused these lots to lose, so to speak, a portion of land that was previously in the restricted zone before 1998 and now ended up within the public zone,” explained the current MTZ coordinator at the municipality, Ericka Matarrita.
According to data provided by Matarrita, there are 140 granted concessions. Of these, only four are currently valid, while 136 are awaiting an extension.
Concessionaires who have part of their plots in the public zone cannot apply for construction or renovation permits, nor update them, because the information in the 1981 coastal plan does not match the IGN’s boundary markers.
Beyond the uncertainty for those with concessions, the montos de los cánones—a type of tax—cannot be updated. Additionally, those with expired concessions must pay it voluntarily. According to the MTZ coordinator, the arrears for these concessions amount to about ¢90 million.
Why have previous initiatives failed?
The first attempt began in 2005, when the ICT and the municipality launched the Comprehensive Coastal Regulatory Plan for Sámara – Carrillo. This plan was part of a project that included the development of 26 regulatory plans in Guanacaste and Puntarenas, including one for the MTZ of Sámara in Nicoya and Carrillo in Hojancha. The total cost was $92 million, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (Spanish acronym: BID) and the government.
In 2016, this attempt was shelved after the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (Setena) rejected its environmental viability, according to resolution 1654-2015-SETENA.
The second attempt began in 2015, as noted in a resolution from the Sala IV, and was shelved in 2023. At that time, the municipality proposed a process of “rectification and adjustment” of the existing regulatory plan. This process allowed the local government to make changes of up to 20% to the current map, according to the ICT’s Coastal Regulatory Plan Preparation Manual.
As it was a rectification and adjustment, the manual exempted the municipality from presenting an environmental variability analysis, provided they adhered to the 20% change limit. However, the Sala IV resolution and a letter from Setena indicated that the municipality’s proposal did need to include this analysis.
The municipality decided to shelve this second project in 2023 due to the need to include environmental viability. According to Matarrita, the local government preferred to start a new regulatory plan, even though they had already presented the previous proposal at a public hearing held on May 28, 2022.
This third attempt aims to cover the area from Buenavista to Carrillo (only the part that belongs to Nicoya), unlike the previous one, which only planned for the Cangrejal – Bajo Cambutes strip.
It would have generated the same administrative cost for us because we would still need to conduct the environmental variability analysis, whether for that sector that could be modified or for everything we are trying to propose in this new plan,” said the MTZ coordinator.
The new regulatory plan requires environmental viability from Setena. However, Setena confirmed to The Voice that there has been no request from the municipality for the review of the plan.
As of today, the local government has not started the preparation of the Environmental Fragility Indices (Spanish acronym: IFA), which are a requirement for environmental approval.
Matarrita admitted that this is due to “the fact that the contract has not been made due to a lack of resources.” According to the MTZ coordinator, the cost for hiring to start the IFA is between ¢20 million and ¢25 million, while the municipality only allocated ¢15 million.
“We are missing a portion that we hope will be provided with the approval of the extraordinary budget for 2024,” commented Matarrita.
The Sámara community will have to wait at least two more years to have the regulatory plan, admitted the MTZ coordinator. She emphasized that this estimate reflects “the best-case scenario.”
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