Celestún, the first Yucatecan municipality to run out of space to build housing developments

The coastal town will no longer be able to grow its housing developments because it has already reached the limit of the land reserve.

MÉRIDA, Yucatán, (August 20, 2021).- Celestún became the first municipality in Yucatán that will not be able to grow more in its housing developments because it has already reached the limit of the territorial reserve, announced the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanmp). 

The director of the Ría de Celestún Biosphere Reserve, which depends on Conanmp, René Humberto Kantún Palma, declared that the municipality “has already reached the limit of its growth in the urban area, and if this situation continues, the urban area will expand to zones that are under conservation programs”. 

He also stated that it is necessary to determine alternatives for the establishment of housing buildings, but within the current urban area. 

The federal official specified that the Celestún natural reserve has 81 thousand hectares that cover Yucatan and Campeche, 50 percent of the aforementioned reserve is located in this entity. 

He added that this natural area encompasses two populations, the first of which is Celestún and the other Isla Arena, which belongs to the municipality of Calkiní, Campeche. 

He recalled that in the municipality there is a proposal to establish a legal fund, however, it does not foresee that it is viable because it is considered for the limits of the territorial reserve. 

“There is a proposal for a legal fund, it does not exist as such, but it is established particularly with environmental terms, although where it is intended to develop it is practically at the limits, we do not have the percentages, we would have to analyze, within the community of Celestún. There are areas where salt ponds were established decades ago, which remained within the area, and it is where people particularly try to settle and those are the places that are not conducive for housing due to the ways in which people build their homes ”. 

Kantún Palma explained that the aforementioned salt ponds were built based on solid waste and garbage, so they do not allow adequate filtering of water discharges. 

“We would have to find other suitable spaces for human habitation that would have to be outside the community. These are issues that we have on our radar, but first do it in an orderly and coordinated manner with the other government instances, ” said the interviewee.