A cry for help. Destruction of cozumel starting in 2013

[Magnolia3]

Alex, I tried to wade thru the Facebook page..obviously you have no other pages or documents to offer?
NO pro side of the argument to offer.. How can you expect me to make an informed judgement without both sides of the situation?

About water: I hate to tell you this but Key West has NO natural water..it has been piped in for years.. If such a situation were to come about in Cozumel, which I doubt will happen, it will either be piped over from the mainland OR more jungle will be removed to make room for a desalination plant. Just pointing out the obvious which I hope it will never come to.

someone mentioned Mexico having enough fossil 'fuel' to adequately supply electricity... true, but going to a renewable source is not altogether such a bad thing no?

I am and have long been interested in being a guardian of our land.. that is to not say I am a tree hugger but I am also realistic that some battles are unwinable. With that said, mitigating the worst aspects OR attempting work this to the islands advantage is also possibly doable..
there is plenty of space between the turbines that can be turned into farmland, or greenhouses for food.
I think you need to be realistic on what is about to happen and how you and the rest of the island can turn it to your advantage rather than a fruitless fight against Mexico City.
That is my opinion..

 

[Laura Cozumeleno]

My doubts are about that paper you've seen.




Large scale wind farms are very expensive pieces of hardware and I find it very hard to believe that either the customer or the design engineers would allow the system to be underengineered for wind loading. Never mind the environmental impact of a failure; the economic hit that the customer or the insurer would take just from the loss of the equipment would be horrendous. It's not conceivable to me that you've hit upon something which has not been considered by the engineering firm designing the project, far less the underwriters of the insuringentity.Theyhave farmore on the linethan youdo; I

think that it is more likely that you have been misinformed.

It's possible that you are simply misinterpreting what you have seen. For example, the International Building Code directs me to design solar arrays in San Antonio which can withstand a three second wind gust of 90mph. That emphatically does NOT mean that I will design a system that will blow away at 91mph; my structural guy and I typically analyze the wind loading at 90mph and then build in a safety factor of 2 or 3. When we stamp a design that conforms to the 90mph requirement, in reality it is far more robust than that.

The 200kph number may simply mean that the site of the proposed wind farm is in a 200kph design zone, although personally I'd be surprised if it were that low. At any rate, my serious doubts are that the system would be built so that it would blow away in a 201kph wind. Nobody wants that.

The "paper" is called Manifestacion de Impacto Ambiental ( Environmental Impact Statement ) it is a document that most of chambers of commerce in Cozumel have a copy from the company that issued it. Several national and international organizations and Universities have the statement now and have issued their comments against the project. We as divers, and environment protectors are very concern and worried about the whole Cozumel ecosystem being in danger.

Wind energy can be great but engineers have to be very careful where they have to drill 10 meters down into the ground by 5 meters wide for 114 towers surrounded each by 1,000 square meters or a "patio" for maintenance. They have to make sure the benefit is higher than the destruction of an habitat. We HAVE the document printed.

You could also ask for a copy if you still don´t believe in what we read, or don´t trust in our understanding, to Citymar

As far as I know, there´s corruption among the insurance companies too. The news papers all over the world are full of those news reporting scams involving failure "planned" risks... it is not that hard to believe.
This kind of significant "errors" are the ones that make us suspect that this project is mainly about money, eolic clean energy is second, where sadly, is the less of the matters of the whole plan.

If you read earlier posts, you can see that most of people do think we are VERY inaccurate with what we are saying such as 6,132 hectare , 120 km long for 25 meters wide roads, involving only 300 local jobs, having NO benefit at all for the residents regarding energy saving FOR the island, etc.etc. Yes, it sounds weird, but it is totally true in this document.

You might want to check : Advierten Expertos Sobre Impactos Ambientales de Proyecto Eólico en Cozumel you can write them in english, they might have a bilingual environmental lawyer to talk to you about all this absurd document that they have also received.

CEMDA stands for "Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental" (Mexican Environmental Law Center)

 

[alexunderpressure]

Magnolia,

go through all posts, I posted several links to pages that object this project and why, check them out.

 

[Mike]

So what are you guys going to do about this other than posting on scubaboard where nothing is going to come of it?

 

[alexunderpressure]

We have studies (check the link on a previous page) from many institutions that deal with the issues of erecting these mills, also the general we are trying to make the Cozumel population aware of this project, as the gvmt is trying to hide it.

Let´s see what happens.

 

[Magnolia3]

We have studies (check the link on a previous page) from many institutions that deal with the issues of erecting these mills, also the general we are trying to make the Cozumel population aware of this project, as the gvmt is trying to hide it.

Let´s see what happens.

Alex, I am going to assume you are a Mexican citizen. I am not, as an expat, it behooves me and anyone else with a visa, no matter if its FMM,FM2 or 3 to stay out of this. Cardinal first rule of expats is to stay out of anything with the stench of politics. I know you might not understand that its, in the expat world,this is not worth losing our Visa over and getting deported. That sounds callous, but I am not about to make my last sight of Mexico the inside of a Mexican jail.

As I suggested before. If there is NO way to stop it, turn it to your advantage. Find some common ground build from there. As long as you dig your heels in, the other side will to.

Exactly what do you expect the board members here to do?

 

[ggunn]

The "paper" is called Manifestacion de Impacto Ambiental ( Environmental Impact Statement ) it is a document that most of chambers of commerce in Cozumel have a copy from the company that issued it. Several national and international organizations and Universities have the statement now and have issued their comments against the project. We as divers, and environment protectors are very concern and worried about the whole Cozumel ecosystem being in danger.

Wind energy can be great but engineers have to be very careful where they have to drill 10 meters down into the ground by 5 meters wide for 114 towers surrounded each by 1,000 square meters or a "patio" for maintenance. They have to make sure the benefit is higher than the destruction of an habitat. We HAVE the document printed.

You could also ask for a copy if you still don´t believe in what we read, or don´t trust in our understanding, to Citymar

As far as I know, there´s corruption among the insurance companies too. The news papers all over the world are full of those news reporting scams involving failure "planned" risks... it is not that hard to believe.
This kind of significant "errors" are the ones that make us suspect that this project is mainly about money, eolic clean energy is second, where sadly, is the less of the matters of the whole plan.

If you read earlier posts, you can see that most of people do think we are VERY inaccurate with what we are saying such as 6,132 hectare , 120 km long for 25 meters wide roads, involving only 300 local jobs, having NO benefit at all for the residents regarding energy saving FOR the island, etc.etc. Yes, it sounds weird, but it is totally true in this document.

You might want to check : Advierten Expertos Sobre Impactos Ambientales de Proyecto Eólico en Cozumel you can write them in english, they might have a bilingual environmental lawyer to talk to you about all this absurd document that they have also received.

CEMDA stands for "Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental" (Mexican Environmental Law Center)

Be that as it may, I am still not convinced that such a project would be designed in such a way as to blow away in a hurricane. As I pointed out earlier I am not a wind energy designer; I am a solar design engineer. As such, I am not a stranger to such matters; I deal with medium to large scale renewable energy projects every day.

But anyway,I believe there is a good possibility that this is all still just a pipe dream in some developer's head and the first construction CAD drawing has not even been issued. The reaction to that 200kph wind speed parameter could be way premature; you cannot criticize a design that hasn't been done yet.

 

[alexunderpressure]

Alex, I am going to assume you are a Mexican citizen. I am not, as an expat, it behooves me and anyone else with a visa, no matter if its FMM,FM2 or 3 to stay out of this. Cardinal first rule of expats is to stay out of anything with the stench of politics. I know you might not understand that its, in the expat world,this is not worth losing our Visa over and getting deported. That sounds callous, but I am not about to make my last sight of Mexico the inside of a Mexican jail.

As I suggested before. If there is NO way to stop it, turn it to your advantage. Find some common ground build from there. As long as you dig your heels in, the other side will to.

Exactly what do you expect the board members here to do?

Spreading the word would be quite enough for me. Aparently this is not known outside Cozumel. Ppl has a right to be informed.

Thank you very much.

 

[fire_diver]

I don't understand your concern about these being damaged from a rare untra-powerful hurricane. Seems as I remember from recent years, most of your hotels and businesses were substantially damaged by these very same storms. Why should a wind-turbine be any great loss compared the rest of structures on the island?

 

[Tigerman]

Because itll fall down on the jungle (whos gonna be trashed by the same hurricane)?