San Pedro is going through a massive growth spurt. We've already shown you the golf cart traffic on the island, but that didn't include all the sand trucks and cement mixers regularly seen trucking through town.
And a big part of this exponential growth is unregulated development - where outlaw developers just do any old thing without environmental clearance - knowing that it's always easier to beg for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.
That's why the department of the environment has been brought to set up an office on the island - so that it can regulate those rogue projects in real time
The area rep told us more last week:
Orlando Habet, Minister of Disaster Risk Management
"Yes, we had a visit last week because we were doing this tour around the country to familiarize ourselves once again with the current conditions since we did a familiarization tour when we had just taken office."
"Three years have passed by so we need to see what's happening now, what improvements have been made and what needs there are. So in San Pedro there was a need for an improved office, a better office for NEMO, so we found a location."
"But we also want to incorporate the Department of Environment and also to have an office for the Forest Department. So hopefully we can get this location where the three offices can be housed in one building and so that there can be some type of collaboration."
"We know because of the tourism, because of the fast development in San Pedro and also in Caye Caulker that there is a need for a permanent, posted personnel for the Department of Environment. We are aware of the developments and we want the developments but we want the developments to be sustainable."
"So the investors come in and they want to build a hotel, a resort and that's fine but after going through the environmental impact assessments, getting environmental clearance, we need to make sure that they do it sustainable."
