Spring 2023
Our Legal Team is Hard at Work
Right now, there are a lot of illegal projects being built and being planned for the Todos Santos region so our current focus is on filing lawsuits and criminal complaints against these projects and the people issuing the permits. Our environmental attorney John Moreno and criminal attorney Carlos Rubio are working hard on numerous lawsuits against the municipality and multiple criminal complaints against the government officials who have issued permits in violation of the PDU. These include multiple homes and vacation rentals on single lots, and constructing apartment buildings and condominium complexes in single family only areas and destroying the neighborhoods.
The rumor that has filtered back to us is that individuals at the building department in La Paz are getting nervous and have slowed down the permit issuing process. Hopefully this means they might do their job and stop issuing illegal permits in violation of our PDU. We shall see.
In addition to the lawsuits, our petition to create the PDU Advisory Committee consisting of residents (which was called for in the PDU, but never established) has been submitted and a lawsuit is ready to follow and will be filed this month. Thanks to all of you who signed the petition.
The lawsuit is being funded by Protect Todos Santos but is being submitted by our Delgado Javier Salgado and the Citizens Council of Todos Santos.
Big News - Demolition of a Dune House Ordered
After a 2-year effort, our attorney John Moreno recently secured from the municipality the first order to demolish a house that was illegally built on the dunes in the El Gavilan area of Pescadero. John says this sets a major precedent that he will amplify throughout the region for other projects that were built and are being built in violation of the PDU.
Closed Ogden Lot Update
As most of you know, thanks to another lawsuit funded by Protect Todos Santos, the creator of the dune lots stretching from Las Tunas to San Sebastian, Eddie Ogden had the construction of his own spec home in Las Tunas stopped by SEMARNAT. (A special thanks to all of you who showed up for the protests). The closure is still in place and John Moreno is continuing to take legal action against the municipality.
We are hoping the closure order will be made permanent and Eddie will be required to take down the fence he put up and fill in the huge hole he created.
This is such an important battle because there have been many dune lot sales recently in the Las Tunas and San Sebastian areas that threaten the dunes.
Article and Ad in the Journal del Pacifico
To discuss the threats Todos Santos faces from out-of-control growth and how we are dealing with it we just submitted an article to the Journal del Pacifico. Look for it when the next issue comes out. We are also placing a half page ad in the publication (donated by Marilyn Martin) to create more awareness of our organization and build our legal war chest so that we can respond quickly and effectively to new illegal projects popping up.
Lot Sales Show Todos Santos Growth Will Accelerate
According to the 2020 census, there were 644,665 people living in Baja Sur that year. Of that number only 11,430 or 1.8% lived in the Todos Santos/Pescadero region and only a couple thousand people lived in the East Cape. According to the MLS a total of 2,379 lots were sold during the last four years from 2019 to 2022 throughout BCS. Here are the lot sale numbers and percentages for each city and region:
Todos Santos – 713 lots or 30%
East Cape – 523 lots or 22%
San Jose del Cabo – 422 lots or 18%
La Paz – 386 or 16%
Cabo San Lucas – 335 or 14%
These numbers indicate San Jose del Cabo, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas are fully developed and 52% of the lots have been sold in the East Cape and Todos Santos and the majority of new development in Baja Sur is going to continue to move our way.
We know that the developers from La Paz and Cabo are going to be looking for work and to cash in on the recent uptick of real estate prices in Todos Santos. Since more money can be made by building multiple vacation rental units and condominium complexes that is what they are doing even though these projects violate the density requirements of the PDU.
We Need Your Help To Stop Them
As we have seen, the Todos Santos region is facing huge and growing threats to the environment and our scarce water resources due to out of the area developers and the only thing standing in their way is Protect Todos Santos. We hope you will consider donating whatever you can afford. Even small monthly donations add up and will enable us to continue our numerous legal battles and efforts to stop this out-of-control growth.
Finally, we need people power too. You can help us by forwarding this newsletter to your friends and suggest they visit our website to become educated about the threats to our pueblo, join us and donate to help us save this magical place we all love and call home.
Muchas Gracias,
The Team at Protect Todos Santos
