Environmental agents criticize license for hotel construction inside coastal protected area

IBAMA inspectors sent a technical note to the Federal Public Prosecution Office and to the Public Prosecution Office of the State of Bahia criticizing the authorization for the resumption of the construction of a luxury hotel in Praia do Forte (Forte Beach) authorized by Rodrigo Santos Alves, superintendent of the agency in the state. The endorsement annulled a previous decision by Ibama itself, which paralyzed the construction of a containment wall in the sand in front of the enterprise, at the risk of compromising the procreation of sea turtles on the site, as previously reported by the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo. A fine of R$ 7.5 million previously decreed by Ibama was also suspended.

The inspectors question the justifications given by Alves for the continuation and reaffirm the legitimacy of the previous inspection. “The entire team was unanimous in stating that the place where the wall was being built was a strip of beach sand. The materiality and authorship of the infraction are obvious, since upon arriving at the site of the intervention, the team from Ibama verified that the company was constructing irregularly and with very serious environmental impacts a containment wall on the beach sand”, says the technical note, to which the Estado de S. Paulo had access.

Appointed by the Minister of the Environment to the position, Rodrigo Santos Alves is also an entrepreneur and a real estate investor who works with luxury properties on the Brazilian coast.