Community-minded citizens in Heredia, Costa Rica are concerned about continued attempts by a coalition of business owners, local governments, and others to roll back protections of Costa Rica’s water resources, said Conceverde (which translates to the Environmental Association of North San Rafael de Heredia).

Rulings over the past years by the country’s high court, the Sala IV, have upheld what is known in Spanish as the “Land Use Matrix for the Protection of Water Resources.”

But in October 2015, the Costa Rican Chamber of Construction filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Environment’s technical secretariat (SENARA) in the Administrative Court to call for the annulment of this instrument that protects the country’s subterranean and other water resources.

Conceverde feels that businesses view the protections as “an obstacle to … carrying out their activities, so they want to eliminate this instrument of protection, even if this means endangering the country’s water resources.”

The matrix lays out specific technical criteria on appropriate land use that considers hydrogeological vulnerability and productive activities, and the relation between them, explained the environmental group in a statement on their blog.

Supporting this most recent legal case to loosen restrictions on water, ostensibly in favor of certain types of development and business activities, are the Chamber of Construction, the Municipality of San José, the Municipality of Poás, Chamber of Industries of Costa Rica, the Costa Rican Textile Chamber, the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce, the Costa Rican Chamber of Hotels, the Hotel Association, the National Radio Association, the Chamber of Freight Transportation, the Association of Real Estate Development, the Union of Chambers and Associations of the Private Business Sector, the Chamber of Infocommunication and Technology Of Engineers and Architects, and others.

A hearing on the case requesting an override of SENARA’s technical criteria on the Land Use Matrix will begin this Thursday, June 29 at 8:30 a.m. at the Contentious Administrative Court, Section Four in the Second Judicial Circuit of San José in Goicochea.

Conceverde said, “We hope that once again the entrepreneurs’ efforts will be stopped and that the judges will decide in favor of the water resource of the Costa Ricans.”

The citizen group “develops activities concerning the protection of water resources in northern Heredia, Costa Rica, a resource that is constantly threatened, both by activities of individuals, as well as the inefficiency of the State authorities in providing adequate protection,” according to their website.