Puerto Azul under Scrutiny Again

The Puerto Azul Development Project has remained very much below the radar since Chief Environmental Officer Martin Alegria gave an update to the media back in January.  The proposed billion dollar investment touted as the world’s first eight star resort is the brainchild of developer Domenico Giannini and will be launched in December.  That is according to an online article in which Giannini commented on the progress of the project.  Puerto Azul is being constructed on the Northern Caye and Sandbore Caye islands within the Lighthouse Reef Atoll, approximately forty-three miles from Belize City.  The complex is described as neither a resort or a tourist village, but instead a timeshare stay.  According to Giannini, they have secured more than sixty clients from a projected total of three hundred customers.  In 2013, Puerto Azul was presented in grand fashion at the Cannes Film Festival in the presence of Ambassadors John Travolta, Kelly Preston and Andrea Bocelli, as well as ministers Manuel Heredia and Erwin Contreras.  While Puerto Azul is ultra high-end, with suites ranging from sixty thousand dollars to three point five million dollars, it is reported that the development is relying upon an Environmental Compliance Plan dating back to 1994.  That ECP, we understand, was for another project which had no finite deadline.  In an interview with News Five on January twentieth, Alegria said that the proposed tourism initiative was still at its nascent stage and that an Environmental Impact Assessment was yet to be submitted.