Comments on: Greenpeace’s Giant Inflatable Toilet in Vallarta

By: Goodman

Goodman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:32:38 +0000

I am sitting on the balcony of an old small lovely (but a bit rustic) hotel ,with only 10 rooms about, 4 blocks from the center of the town of Puerta Vallarta…and the view is disturbing. Every morning a brown ribbon of ?water? is all along the beach…..and continues out for about 300yards….and then it washes up on the beach…no one goes into the water here to swim…unless they are unaware .It is not just the hotels here responsible….the whole city must be contributing, as there are no large hotels around us, I am in a residential district…….and the smog is also a problem…..he city is growing tooo fast!

By: John Youden

John Youden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:07:55 +0000

The places they found to be worst, as I understand on their website, were at Boca de Tomatlan and Mismaloya. There is only one hotel at these locations. It seems that the problem originates upstream, the amount of development that is taking place along the river, building homes that are not connected to any sewage system as it doesn’t exist in these places.

Facts are important. As a publisher (online via a website and also as a blogger and in print), I realize that anything I say in these mediums needs to be collaborated in some way. This is important for the credibility of our publications and my position as a blogger.

I mean, take a look at the response you got from “Una Turista”. Your statements can have wide ramifications.

I would think that hotels in Vallarta would have a very difficult time leaking sewage into the bay. Hotels outside of Vallarta, I know have problems, such as in Bucerias, La Cruz and Sayulita. However, they don’t yet have the infrastructure that was put in place many years ago through the Sister Cities program that our mayor at the time, Sr. Gonzalez, (and past General Director of Seapal in PV) managed to take advantage of and get us decent infrastructure. Again, my comment was with regards to you stating that “all” hotels pump their sewage into the bay. And that’s still a lot different than “filtering”.

We have just gone through five years of incredible growth, growth that the local governments, understandably, could not keep up with. Hopefully with this downturn in the market, less developments will be undertaken, and we can catch up with infrastructure problems. This is a universal problem wherever fast development takes place.

I agree with you regarding how Greenpeace handled all this, it was VERY strange. And I also agree with you, especially from listening to Mexican national news lately, on how Acapulco could not be the #1 polluter, or at least ahead of Vallarta.

And you are correct as well, with regards to conflicting “facts” from the government and Greenpeace. But that doesn’t justify that we need to resort to those tactics. Calling them on it is important, but it is not so easy. Things, unfortunately are not so “black & white” in Mexico.

Best,

John

By: ovi

ovi — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:54:43 +0000

Hi John,

Thank you for your comment, we appreciate it very much as it contributes to important issues like this one.

First to your questions:

1. Why would we want to back something up with “facts” when everybody knows how Hotels DO pump their sewage into the bay. The question here is: How good is the “filtering” system of each Hotel. Does it count with regular checks and updates? etc…

2. If we had the time to go to each Hotel and check them out, we would, but we don’t. Which is the reason we just write about it and let people make their own decisions. There is GOOGLE and a lot of other places you can research how Hotels deal with their poop. Just an example: http://www.oceansatlas.org/servlet/CDSServlet?status=ND0xNzk1OSY2PWVuJjMzPSomMzc9a29z

Maybe instead of writing VallartaBlog about the statement, someone should write GreenPeace and complain about their mysterious acts and other accusations…

We know Vallarta isn’t the cleanest beach in Mexico but it’s not near as bad as Acapulco and the truth is it has been getting better with the years.

Also sad is that the government AND greenpeace do not document with “facts” what’s going on and what they’re doing. Questions on why Greenpeace’s tests show it’s polluted and how the government’s test show the contrary. These questions have to be answered or documented: Who? Where? When? What?

By: John Youden

John Youden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:25:37 +0000

“we think it is still a good idea as the truth is that all the hotels pump their sewage into the bay”

Can you back this statement up with facts? And can you present them here? That is a very strong statement to make.

John

By: M T Perry

M T Perry — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:24:19 +0000

Oh my goodness! The hotels really pump raw sewage into the bay? Is there not some sort of sewage treatment facility in Puerto Vallarta. It seems that with all that raw sewage going in and the heat that soon you will have “poop soup”. Not a pretty picture!

Una turista

By: admin

admin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:35:08 +0000

Now that the Walt Disney movie is being filmed in Puerto Vallarta, it might be good for Greenpeace to protest in that area since it is getting a lot of attention from the international news media.

By: Helene

Helene — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:56:12 +0000

Hi, I would love to see more things to be done to make each individual think about and act about keeping the beaches, the streets and all other areas of Puerto Vallarta and Banderas Bay, clean.
If this greenpeace action in Puerto Vallarta really happended, then it was definitely done a very silent way….this kind of action needs to be announced ahead of time, people need to be aware of it…..vaya, vaya…..I also hope the local visitors and tourists take a bit more care of these areas and leave the beaches with their own garbage. There is lots to do for greenpeace if they would be interested in and I hope and wish they or anybody else will help to informa and educate the people………Thanks for listening. Saludos desde el D.F.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:48:54 +0000

Thank you Megumi Garcia Oguri,

But still, the locals we asked here in Los Muertos didn’t know about it and also no local newspaper reported anything.

Local NewsPapers are VallartaToday, VallartaOpina, BanderasNews, Vallarta Tribune, etc..

The ones you mentioned above have copied the same article we encountered several times and they aren’t local, they are from Guadalajara, Spain and elsewhere, which is the reason why we posted this doubt of ours that it seemed very very unusual to “protest” against anything at 8 a.m. in the morning and only for one hour, when a protest should attract attention and be held at least during traffic hours, so people get to the message.

Personally I have participated and photographed some protests held by the Grupo Ecologista de Vallarta and I must say I have never encountered such a protest like the one at issue here.

It almost seems like they didn’t want to attract any attention. In fact they could have saved themselves some time/money/energy by just creating a false image in PhotoShop, since it seems that is the only result from this protest; a picture.

By: Megumi García Oguri

Megumi García Oguri — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:35:33 +0000

The event did in fact, happen, and there was media coverage from several local newspapers. The reason for which you might have not caught a glimpse of it is that it took place at around 8am and only lasted about 1 hour. Actually, other NGO’s were involved; Hojanay, Grupo Ecologista de Nayarit and Alianza Costa Verde. Some newspapers in Jalisco like El Occidental, Público and Mural published aritcles the next day.

Here are some supporting links:

http://www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=315125

http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=429617&idseccio_PK=1021

http://www.greenpeace.org/mexico/news/instala-greenpeace-escusado-gi#Scene_1

http://www.diariometro.es/es/article/efe/2007/08/02/249477/index.xml