Greed, corruption, land exploitation, and water shortages...
these may sound like themes from Roman Polanski’s , but the residents of Dominical will tell you that these issues are a reality in their own backyard. This situation is indicative of a larger trend in Costa Rica, where developers openly flaunt environmental laws with little to no consequences for their actions. While El Niño brought lower than normal rainfall to Costa Rica at the beginning of 2024, members of the community in Dominical claim that it is not the weather phenomenon, but rather a development project in the mountains that has caused a series of extended water shortages – the longest of which, on March 22, lasted over 10 hours.
Even though Costa Rican law explicitly states that development projects cannot interfere with water supplies, attempts to notify the authorities of the issue in Dominical seemed to be futile. Multiple complaints or were made through the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) Integrated System for Processing and Attention to Environmental Complaints (SITADA), but there were reportedly no responses. This led residents to take matters into their own hands by creating a coalition of community members, informally called Water Issues Dominical, to raise awareness of the development project and how it was affecting their water supply.
By using flyers to inform home and business owners in town of what was going on, only then were the residents able to raise concern to collective.
