Claiming she represents the interests of all those Cayo residents living downstream of Chalillo, Candy Gonzalez says all she wants is for BECOL and the Department of Environment to obey the law.

Candy Gonzalez, V.P., Bz. Inst. Of Environmental Law “It’s called in legal terms a Writ of Mandamus and what we are doing is asking the court to tell the Department of  Environment to please enforce the law. And the laws that we want enforced is that they make sure that an environmental compliance plan that was signed by BECOL and
the Department of Environment be enforced.”

Stewart Krohn “What part of this environmental compliance plan is not being dealt with properly?”

Candy Gonzalez
“Well, a lot of it is being dealt with but the main things that we are stressing are the issues of emergency preparedness plan that is not in place and we are at the beginning of the hurricane season and issues of the health and safety of both the water and the level of mercury in the fish in the fish of the Macal River.”

Stewart Krohn
“So what specifically are you asking the court to do for you today?”

Candy Gonzalez
“We are asking the court to direct BECOL or actually to direct the Department of Environment to have BECOL enforce the law. And the thing that we are using as a leverage is that Vaca dam is now being built which will create even a bigger problem because there will be three dams that could possibly break and send water down
to the communities downstream and so we want Vaca dam to be stopped, halted, an injunction until the environmental compliance plan for Chalillo is complied with.”

George Gonzalez, Cayo Resident
“NEMO was in Cayo doing a thing on the hurricane preparedness plan and part of the plan is to evacuate people from Belize City to Cayo which they say the population is going to double, more than double. Without having a plan for the Chalillo itself it doesn¹t make any sense to bring more people to a place.”

Judy Duplooy, Resort Owner “If there were to be a dam break we would have no way of knowing the dam was breaking, that the water was coming down and we don’t know where we would tell anybody to go or what kind of warning we would give them so
it seems to me that a simple warning system from BECOL would be a big help.”
Gonzalez and her Cayo colleagues are taking the legal action without being represented by an attorney, although it should be noted that Gonzalez herself is a lawyer licensed to practice in the United States.