Signatures are being collected against the Peninsula of Dreams megaproject in La Ventana, BCS

Fishermen, residents, scientists and tourism service providers from Baja California Sur began a campaign to collect signatures on Change.org to demand the revocation of the environmental authorization of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) for the Megaproject Peninsula of Dreams, recently relaunched under the name of Los Saguaros Marina Resort.

The petition, promoted by the Salvando La Ventana collective, argues that the project would jeopardize one of the most important marine ecosystems in the Gulf of California and would affect the economic activities of communities such as Agua Amarga, El Sargento and La Ventana.

The project, authorized in 2016, involves the construction of more than 7,000 homes, almost 8,000 hotel rooms, a marina with 446 berthing positions, golf courses, an airstrip and desalination plants on the emblematic Punta Arena beach, on an area of 3,519 hectares.

“This would radically transform more than 13 kilometers of coastline into a mega-tourist city within an extremely fragile ecosystem,” they say in the petition.

The citizen mobilization came after the promoters began to relaunch the project through a first phase called Los Saguaros Marina Resort, after several years without visible progress.

Among the main concerns of its opponents are the effects that could be caused by the marina and desalination plants on the Cerralvo Island Canal, a marine biological corridor of great importance located in front of Punta Arena. According to monitoring carried out by the Orgcas organization, species such as blue whales, humpback whales, sperm whales, dolphins and orcas inhabit or transit the area, the latter using the area to breed and teach their young to hunt.

The construction of the marina would involve dredging and modifications to marine currents, while desalination plants would extract 14.5 million gallons of seawater per day and generate nearly 8 million gallons of concentrated brine, which would be discharged back to the Gulf of California.

The campaign's sponsors also warn that development could jeopardize traditional access to the sea and the economic model based on fishing and nature tourism on which communities such as Agua Amarga, La Ventana, El Sargento, Los Planes, Boca del Álamo and El Cardonal depend.

In addition to revoking the environmental authorization granted a decade ago by Semarnat, the petition requests inspections of the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa) for restrictions on access to Punta Arena and proposes that the Punta Arena-Isla Cerralvo corridor be recognized as a priority marine area for conservation.