Bajamar, a gated golf and resort coastal community about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, is the type of development that environmentalists love to hate. The 27-hole golf course, billed as “Pebble Beach South of the Border,” is built on a coastal bluff surrounded by pristine coastal sage scrub, with some of the finest ocean views north of Ensenada. More than 360 Spanish-style homes surround the golf course. Guests and residents are primarily from the United States.

A closer look reveals that nature is not dead at Bajamar. Large swaths of native scrub remain within its 650-acre grounds, and agaves (century plants) grow here and there. Red-tailed hawks on the lookout for jackrabbits patrol the fairways. Bajamar’s developers worked with a team of conservation biologists from the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada to preserve open space within the compound and also the coastal sage around it.

Despite such efforts to balance profits and the environment, however, what happens outside the resort’s boundaries is beyond its control. Nor does any zoning or coastal plan protect against incompatible land uses. In 2005, Sempra-Shell began building a $700-million liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal just south of Bajamar, and has since proposed to expand the facility to 2.5 times its current size. Most of the gas is destined for California, although some will be used in Baja California.

According to Bill Powers, co-chair of the Border Power Plant Work Group, a binational organization that has contested the placement of LNG terminals adjacent to residential areas in Mexico, “The area being developed by Sempra-Shell is either completely undeveloped or [has] low-impact development. They are building a huge industrial facility at the site, changing it from a rural windswept coast to one of the two biggest industrial facilities on Baja’s coast.”

The Baja Boom
During the past five years, quiet seaside villages and fishing settlements along the peninsula’s Pacific coastline have been transformed into the Wild West of Mexico. Rosarito Beach and other boomtowns are filled with high-rise Cancun-style condo fortresses, gaudy narco-deco-styled spring-break hotels, and opulent mansions. But outside the party zones can be found more and more industrial development, buttressed by shantytowns where raw sewage flows freely into the ocean. Garbage washes down gullies when it rains and is rarely picked up.

The exorbitant cost of coastal housing in southern California, combined with the opening of lands in Baja California that were previously locked out of development by legal constraints, have created a land rush, the “Baja Boom.” One promotional real estate brochure calls it “a repeat of what’s happened to California since the 1940s.” The natural coastal landscape is being carved up for residential and vacation developments at a frenzied pace.

Investing in real estate has always been a risky business in Mexico. Investors who purchase a homesite at a high-end, well-planned golf resort might one day learn that their neighbor will be an industrial facility that communities in California such as Long Beach, Malibu, Oxnard, and Ventura have fought to keep out of their backyards.

Throughout much of the peninsula, coastal land is held by ejidos, or agricultural collectives. A few of these rank among the largest in Mexico, comprising more than a million acres, with up to 50 miles of undeveloped shoreline graced by picturesque beaches and bays, as well as some of North America’s most pristine wetlands.

Until 1992, foreigners could not legally own land in Mexico and ejido land could not be sold. Then, under former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Article 27 of the Constitution was amended to facilitate the modernization of agriculture. The redistribution of land through governmental expropriation was prohibited; parcelized communal lands can now be rented and, in some instances, sold to other farmers or multinational corporations. Corporations, both domestic and foreign, can now own land. This was a significant repudiation of the Mexican Revolution and a defining moment in Mexico’s land use policy.

Ejido members began to privatize collective lands--and then sell plots of that land to pretty much anyone. However, because Mexican federal agricultural officials often took up to a decade to survey and title ejidal lands throughout the Baja California peninsula, many have come on the market only in the past few years.

Ejido members tend to be land rich and cash poor, so when developers offer them quick cash for their acreage, many jump at the chance to bring in income. The buyers very often represent land speculators and developer syndicates. The result is the potential destruction of many of the peninsula’s most scenic and ecologically significant natural sites, especially along the coast.

Post-NAFTA Deals
Contributing to the boom is the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which eased restrictions on trans-border commerce. Some of the world’s largest corporations began looking at Baja California as a possible location for industrial projects--especially those that cannot easily be built north of the border because they are considered hazardous or potentially polluting. The fact that coastal real estate is much cheaper there than in the United States was definitely a plus. Areas that have been targeted for development include some of the finest remaining examples of coastal desert and coastal sage scrub ecosystems left on earth.

Eighty miles south of Ensenada, at Punta Colonet, a network of Mexican and Asian investors is planning to build a new 27,000-acre megaport industrial complex, complete with a new city for 250,000 residents. The Ministry of the Environment of Mexico recently rejected the environmental impact assessment of the project as inadequate, but the document will be revised and resubmitted. The proposed port is designed to compete with the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

In Bahía de los Ángeles, on the Sea of Cortez, the Mexican National Trust Fund for Tourism Development (FONATUR) is proposing to build a new mega-resort around what is now a remote and rural fishing community that fronts a network of islands, Santos de los Coronados, that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Plans for the project include expanding a port already built at the remote fishing village of Santa Rosalillita, on the Pacific Coast, and building a “land bridge” or superhighway from there to Bahía de los Ángeles to allow yachts to be hauled by large trucks across the peninsula to facilitate yachting in the Sea of Cortez.

Farther south, a number of large development projects have been proposed for the now-tranquil embayment of Bahía Concepción, which contains white-sand beaches, beautiful islands, and some of the the most ecologically sensitive coastal mangrove wetlands in the Sea of Cortez.

Aware that time is running out for Baja’s coastline, a network of Mexican and American conservationists has formed in hopes of putting the brakes on anything-goes development and preserving at least some of Baja’s wildest and most ecologically pristine coastal areas.

The focal point of the current Baja Boom is the 60-mile stretch of coastline between Tijuana and Ensenada. Up until the 1990s this area, connected by a four-lane toll road, was characterized primarily by small U.S.-expatriate settlements and the then-small tourist town of Rosarito Beach. Now it’s buzzing with growth fueled by the demand for beachfront real estate. “For Sale” signs dot the edges of the coastal highway. The steel frames of high-rise condos loom beside ramshackle beachfront shantytowns crowded with workers in the construction and tourist trades.

Tijuana is expanding southward and now extends to the edge of Rosarito Beach. So great is the local demand for housing in Tijuana that new developments and colonias (neighborhoods) are spilling out onto the coastal plain just north and east of Rosarito, and even beyond the barren earth-colored mountains to the east.

One of the biggest concerns residents have is the lack of wastewater infrastructure adequate to meet the needs of existing and proposed development. Such sewage pump stations as exist break down continually because of power outages and leaks. Half of Tijuana’s estimated population of two million lives in colonias without wastewater treatment, so sewage is often dumped directly onto the beach--even at the upscale Playas de Tijuana just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. Other colonias are served by septic systems, with hulking trucks pumping up the sludge and, often, emptying their loads directly into arroyos that lead to the beach. A mere six miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, up to 30 million gallons of treated and untreated (50-50) sewage are dumped daily onto the beach at Punta Banderas, the location of a golf community and the site of the planned $200-million Trump Ocean Resort. The Trump project’s website displays a seaside swimming pool adjacent to rocky cliffs and proclaims that its “oceanfront living” will appeal to “senses that will stir your soul.” More than 80 percent of the first of three planned high-rise condo towers sold in a one-day sale event in San Diego in December 2006.

Baja California officials quoted in the San Diego Union estimated that more than 24 large projects with over 2,800 residential units are planned in the area between Tijuana and Ensenada, including more than a dozen condo towers. A new four-lane highway, Boulevard 2000, was recently opened, connecting eastern Tijuana to the seaside community of Popotla, just south of Rosarito Beach. It runs mostly through undeveloped and sparsely inhabited chaparral ranchland.

Sewage to the Beach
In building the new highway, Baja California officials seem to have anticipated the development boom that has doubled the size of Tijuana and Rosarito Beach in the past decade. How odd, therefore, that they have failed to invest in the construction of appropriate wastewater treatment plants for the existing residents of the region who lack basic services. Rumors abound in local newspapers about ties between officials who approved the road project and land speculators who have purchased land around the route.

In the small beachside community of Camp Torrest, north of Rosarito, Mark Padilla, 48, who has been a part-time resident for 34 years, documented a stream of sewage that empties onto the beach next to his house, courtesy of the San Marino housing development across the toll road. His landlord gave permission to the developer to dump the sewage into an arroyo on her property. “I just can’t believe that it is legal,” Padilla told me.

Matt Hoffower, a 33-year-old surfer, echoed Flores. He recently moved back to San Diego after living in Rosarito Beach with his wife and son while working as a real estate agent. “Living in Baja is hard,” he said. “The arroyos are horrible and filled with trash.” Hoffower smiles. “I used to tell the agents I worked with, ‘You see how the ocean is glassy? That’s from the sewage in the water. That isn’t natural.’ They didn’t want to believe me. I couldn’t justify selling property with conditions like that.”

The real estate boom in northern Baja California is a vivid lesson for a network of conservationist and environmental leaders concerned with preserving undeveloped coastal areas south of Ensenada. During the six-year presidency of Vicente Fox, which ended in 2006, a slew of mega-development projects emanating from Mexico City impacted the entire Baja California peninsula, including some of the most biologically important areas. Whether it was the proposed Puerto Los Cabos marina development that has damaged the San José del Cabo estuary, a Chevron-Texaco LNG facility adjacent to the Coronado Islands, or the mega-resort planned for Bahía de Los Ángeles, these projects seemed to threaten just about every coastal area of ecological significance.

Because they are remote, hours by car from the nearest paved road, many wild areas in Baja California had until recently been considered undevelopable. For example, the Pacific fishing town of Punta Abreojos, just north of San Ignacio Lagoon on the Pacific coast, has attracted mostly surfers and fishermen. Now the state of Baja California Sur has proposed a cruise ship terminal there.

For Fernando Ochoa, a 32-year-old attorney from Mexico City who runs the Northwest Environmental Law Center in Ensenada--one of only two nonprofit environmental law firms in Mexico--the number of development projects in Baja is “overwhelming.” He said, “The total budget for conservation of the Mexican government and NGOs is literally millions of times less than what is destined for development. . . . There are not enough people working in the conservation field compared to the development field.”

Nevertheless, Ochoa successfully blocked efforts by FONATUR to build a marina in a wetland just north of Bahía de los Ángeles. He prevailed on behalf of local fishermen and community residents who use the wetland for fishing and recreation. After that victory, Ochoa switched his focus to blocking the cruise ship terminal in Punta Abreojos, with the help of Mexico’s Group of 100, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and WiLDCOAST.

“We want to see development that complies with Mexican laws so there is sustainable development, healthy communities, and projects that are appropriate for the natural environment where they are proposed,” said Ochoa. “Punta Abreojos is not an appropriate location for a cruise ship terminal. Since the community has an economy based on fishing, they need projects that correspond to the needs of the community.”

Ochoa believes that the long-term solution to conflicts between inappropriate development and conservation is working with local landowners to make conservation an economic option. “Poverty is a cultural and social problem in Mexico,” he said. “If poor people who own nothing but their land sell out to a speculator for a low price, they will either become destitute where they live or they will have to migrate to a city to work.” What’s needed are financial incentives for rural landowners to adopt conservation easements on their properties, to provide “long-term options, rather than just the short-term option of selling.”

In San Ignacio Lagoon, where whales go to give birth, the strategy of land conservation combined with sustainable development has proved effective. The lagoon, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is some 600 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. About 500 local residents make their living from fishing and conducting whale-watching tours on the lagoon, an isolated wetland that is also habitat for black brant, eastern Pacific sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, and thousands of shorebirds.

In 1994 San Ignacio Lagoon came close to destruction. The Mexican Salt Exporting Company (ESSA), 49 percent of which is owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation, announced plans to build a 500,000-acre industrial salt-harvesting facility along the north shore. A battle ensued between pro-development forces and an international coalition of environmental groups. In 2000, President Ernesto Zedillo canceled the project. A year later, however, ESSA renewed its concession to harvest salt from the lagoon, and rumors spread that ESSA planned to renew the large-scale salt project. In response, local landowners joined forces in 2003 with Pronatura Noroeste, WiLDCOAST, NRDC, and the International Community Foundation to form the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance. Their purpose was to establish an agreement with the Ejido Luis Echeverría, which owns 140,000 acres of the lagoon’s southern shore, to plan a conservation program that would protect the 900,000 acres of lagoon habitat and help support local livelihoods.

The result was a pioneering deal by the ejido to protect all of the land within its boundaries--much of the southern portion of the lagoon’s watershed--in return for the establishment of a $725,000 trust fund and $500,000 in direct payments to its 44 members. On March 15, 2007, Ernesto Enkerlin, the director of Mexico’s National Protected Areas Commission (CONANP), announced that President Felipe Calderón had agreed to have his agency manage the 110,000-acre ESSA concession for conservation purposes. The agreement is awaiting final approval by the president. To date, the San Ignacio Conservation Alliance has preserved 140,000 acres and has a goal of protecting another 860,000 acres of lagoon habitat.

The challenge for conservationists and residents of coastal Baja California will be finding a balance between the desire for progress and growth that drives the modern economy of Mexico and concern for preserving coastal habitats that exist nowhere else on earth. For Raúl López, the president of Ejido Echeverría, who helped broker the deal to preserve San Ignacio Lagoon and who makes his living fishing and running Kuyima, a local ecotourism company, the goal is not simply protecting a world-class coastal wetland.

“I am very proud of what we did,” he told me. “We helped preserve the right of local people to work their land, and we have made sure there is access to the public. There are no fences keeping people out. There are some people who think that the only option is to build mega-resorts. But I think that those of us who live in rural areas surrounded by natural beauty have an obligation to preserve these areas for everyone.”

Hopefully, López’s vision of a coastline on which people can live sustainably with nature can be exported to other areas of the peninsula. Otherwise there is little hope for preserving much of Baja California’s truly wild coastline.

Serge Dedina is the executive director of WiLDCOAST, a nonprofit organization based in Imperial Beach, California, that works to preserve coastal ecoystems and wildlife in the Californias and Latin America. He is the author of Saving the Gray Whale (University of Arizona Press, 2000), and wrote his first article for Coast & Ocean in 1990.