Kilotonnes of Seaweed become a Curse to Many, a Resource to a Few

You can look at the Sargassum overabundance as a curse, and you can also look at it as a blessing. In February, when millions of cubic meters of Sargassum washed onto beaches and mangroves along the Roatan shoreline, many islanders took action. Others did nothing at all. After two months, the results are in.
The winter of 2026 broke records, creating a Sargassum bloom never before seen at this scale in the western Caribbean. The 2025 Sargassum biomass was estimated at 37 million tons, but this year will surely smash the record once the tally is in.

The extraordinarily large bloom is attributed to wind-driven upwelling in the Atlantic, which brought extra nutrients to the Sargassum belt.
On Roatan, two species of Sargassum have wreaked havoc: Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans have been washing up. Sargassum is a type of brown macroalgae, or seaweed, that grows in the Atlantic and is pushed eastward by wind onto the shores of islands and continents. Things get out of hand when Sargassum quantities become 50 or 100 times greater than in a typical year.

The Sargassum Impact

Sargassum disrupts ecosystems, creates a foul odor and traps tiny fish. The seaweed depletes oxygen in the surrounding water. As it breaks down and decomposes, Sargassum produces hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, resulting in a low pH level. This further harms the aquatic environment and the animals that live there. The result is the creation of dead zones under and around floating, decomposing Sargassum.

In other words, Sargassum degrades water quality and makes the marine environment inhospitable. The number of species and the density of marine life drop. Once Sargassum leaves the island’s coast, the true scale of those negative effects can be assessed. When Sargassum envelops mangrove areas, it also stifles local fish species that use mangroves as nurseries.

Another negative effect is the microplastics that are brought in by the Sargassum. The pieces of Sargassum float hundreds of meters from beaches, and swimming or snorkeling can be a less pleasant experience.

There are a few benefits of this seaweed for critters that feed on it. Sargassum provides a rich environment for organisms such as bacteria and fungi, which grow on decomposing plant matter, breaking it down and turning it into nutrients. Some fish, including juvenile triggerfish and filefish, feed on the invertebrates that live with the Sargassum. Tiny amphipods and isopods graze on the decaying Sargassum, and those, in turn, become food for crabs and fish.

There are examples of such events in the recent past. In 2018, Mexico’s Caribbean coast was so inundated with Sargassum that it caused a die-off of dozens of animal species. This year, Sargassum has overwhelmed Roatan’s beaches, and the island’s marine life has been hit hard.

While Roatan is about 42 kilometers long, its meandering shoreline stretches well over 160 kilometers. Tens of millions of cubic meters of Sargassum have washed ashore on Roatan.

WEST BAY UNDER SARGASSUM SIEGE

On Feb. 9 and 10, the situation got out of control. As rainy weather kept most West Bay tourists from going to the beach, Roatan’s premier beach shore was packed with Sargassum. West Bay, the jewel of Roatan tourism, has been affected as never before. The 1,000-meter-long beach was surrounded by a belt of Sargassum that was 100 meters wide and half a meter thick.

Local authorities became preoccupied with solving the immediate problem of Sargassum affecting the beach experience for thousands of tourists visiting the jewel of Roatan. They felt they needed to act quickly, and that solution was to truck the Sargassum to dumping sites across the western side of the island and bury the rest under the white beach sand with heavy machinery and plenty of manpower.

Sargassum has been racked by hand by dozens of municipal workers, wheel barrowed onto trucks and dumped by the side of West Bay Road and at the municipal dump. Paya Magazine calculates that more than 300,000 cubic meters of Sargassum were removed from West Bay Beach in the winter of 2026.

While covering tons of Sargassum directly beneath two meters of white West Bay sand seemed to solve the aesthetic problem in a matter of days, as with many quick decisions, the unintended consequences might take several months or years to be realized. “Burying the Sargassum on a white sandy beach like West Bay can result in changing the color of the sand over time,” said Darrell Humphries, HOA manager at Palmetto Bay since 2016. “If you start placing Sargassum there, you can end up with darker, browner-colored sand eventually.”

According to Humphries, turtle grass and spaghetti grass, with their high calcium content, eventually turn into sand, but Sargassum turns into a solid, darker material. “Sargassum is a darker type of product once it is broken down,” Humphries says. “It’s empirical, a lot of observational stuff we have learned over time.”

Another potential unintended consequence of burying Sargassum under a relatively narrow and steep West Bay Beach is the potential to speed up beach erosion. While burying Sargassum along West Bay Beach has given beach users a wider and taller beach, that effect could be only temporary.

Sargassum blocks sunlight reaching both coral and sea grass.

The higher beach will erode more quickly from currents and storms in the coming months, and perhaps a year or two. The waterlogged, spongy Sargassum will eventually be compressed into a minuscule layer of brown solids. When the currents finish their equalizing work and the Sargassum compression process ends, West Bay Beach might be narrower and lower. The beautiful beach might be less wide after Sargassum floated into West Bay in February 2026.

BEYOND WEST BAY

While the attention of Roatan Municipality authorities focused resources and manpower on tourist areas such as West Bay and West End, the rest of the island was left to fend for itself. The communities of Punta Gorda and Brick Bay were particularly affected by the tons of decomposing, foul-smelling seaweed.

Some places have had it worse than others. In the Brick Bay community, the Sargassum has been accumulating and decomposing for more than six weeks. Several hundred people live in this densely populated south side seaside village.

As older seaweed decomposes, new waves of Sargassum wash ashore, replacing it. The stench of rotting Sargassum is similar to that of a failed septic system. While no one has become ill, constant exposure to the stench of decomposing Sargassum has been stressful and miserable. “People are getting accustomed. In their homes, the smell seems less strong,” said Ricardo Hernández, a longtime Brick Bay resident.

The Honduran Navy has considered bringing in a floating barrier to prevent more Sargassum from floating into Brick Bay. The most likely outcome is that the problem will solve itself naturally. Nature will take away what nature has created. “We are waiting for a northern that would move the Sargassum out to sea,” says Hernández, whose Brick Bay home is 15 meters from the sea.

SARGASSUM AS A RESOURCE

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the proverbial phrase. The ideal situation would be to treat Sargassum as a periodic resource: a fertilizer, a building material for roads and landfills, and even an element for creating building blocks.

In Mexico, local entrepreneurs have found a way to turn Sargassum into a construction material. They gather Sargassum from beaches, and then wash it with fresh water to remove the salt. Next, the Sargassum is dried and shredded, and a cement mixture is added. The rectangular Sargassum building blocks are then dried in the sun. The resulting Sargassum-cement blocks are strong, fire-resistant, thermally massive and inexpensive.

On Roatan, some islanders have been using Sargassum as fertilizer for well over a decade. They pick up the seaweed from the beaches, rinse it with fresh water, and then spread it around the base of their fruit trees. “We let it dry out and put it all over the plants,” said Richard Anderson, a hotel owner from West End. “It’s like Popeye when you give him spinach.” Anderson rinses the Sargassum and then dries it out before using it all over his property.

There are also islanders who use Sargassum as a construction material and landfill material. Over the years, the Palmetto Bay maintenance staff has become expert at quickly gathering Sargassum from the beach and using it for improvements in community areas.

Islanders have been using Sargassum as a fertilizer.

Palmetto Bay maintenance staff has been using washed-out Sargassum, turtle grass and spaghetti grass to construct a walking trail and road system in its low-lying Bird Sanctuary community area. This project began in 2014, so the Palmetto Bay HOA staff has gained extensive experience handling Sargassum and using it in careful, strategic ways.

Palmetto Bay maintenance staff have been using Sargassum as a natural, free fertilizer for some of their plants. “It’s a great fertilizer; it’s great for mixing in with regular soil,” says Darell Humphries, manager at Palmetto Bay.

The steps in producing this free plant stimulant are minimal. Workers gather the Sargassum with a tractor, place it on a trailer, and dump it in an area where rain rinses it down. Then the Palmetto Bay staff places the broken-down Sargassum at the base of plants and trees. “Peppers and other vegetables do very well with Sargassum,” says Humphries.

The maintenance tractor operators try to avoid picking up Sargassum that has rolled around in the water and become entangled with a lot of sand. They try to keep picking up Sargassum and keeping the entangled sand to a minimum, somewhere around 5% to 10%.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws,” wrote Plato, a Greek philosopher, 2,400 years ago. In 2025, Roatan municipality installed 400 CCTV cameras in an effort to identify the so-called “bad people.” These cameras are likely to become part of a much larger surveillance infrastructure. At the cost of losing personal privacy and spending millions of dollars in taxes, the island is on its way to building a 21st-century panopticon prison.

I guarantee there will be numerous unintended negative consequences of installing extensive CCTV cameras on the island. Here is a short list of possibilities: an increase in our taxes, a loss of our privacy, a shift from self-reliance to reliance on government assistance, the future selling of CCTV and other data to bad actors, the creation of a false sense of security, and the unleashing of a never-ending need for more surveillance.

Here is one more reason: Once a serious crime is committed by the Honduran national police —and sadly, that does happen— and it is recorded on a CCTV system, the municipality will be placed under pressure from the police and likely become a party to the cover-up.

The high-trust society that Roatan once was has gradually been replaced by technology and a false sense of trust in government institutions. Put simply, the island’s social capital is being replaced by technocracy. Once that capital is lost, it is extremely difficult to regain.

Security has two aspects: true security and the perception of security. While claiming to provide safety for citizens, security systems often serve to maintain state control and enforce conformity among the population. The carrot is not the goal, but an excuse to impose a surveillance system for the benefit of those in control. While we might argue about who those controllers are, we can all agree—the controllers are not us.

Systems often serve to maintain state control.

In other words Roatanians might be suffering from a case of collective illusion. They may be going along with the idea of creating a “smart city” that could erode the precious freedoms they may not realize can be taken away. The unfortunate truth is that by surrendering your privacy in hopes of gaining security, you could end up with neither freedom nor security. Freedom comes with risk. If you want 100% security, you would need to check yourself into a maximum-security prison with 24/7 camera surveillance—and you’d better hope your cellmate isn’t Jeffrey Epstein.

So let’s not make the mistake other already have. There are places all over the world that have already become surveillance zones ridden with nightmares. They are not in any way safer—in reality, they are unsafe for citizens. The state monitors those spaces and decides which actions it wants to prosecute. Not wearing masks in public, possibly praying near an abortion clinic, jaywalking —you name it— are all offenses that have recently been punished in Great Britain.

Great Britain has arrested tens-of-thousands of individuals for posting memes and criticizing government policies. Every day, around 30 people in Britain are arrested, tried and sent to jail for media posts deemed “offensive,” not even “hateful,” as well as for silent prayers near abortion clinics. The number of people arrested for simply making statements has grown to 12,000 a year.

This persecution of its own population is only possible thanks to media monitoring by thousands of state agencies and 6 million CCTV cameras—21 million surveillance cameras in total—monitoring 70 million British residents. Many of those cameras have one-way or two-way audio capability.

Freedom for individuals in China is even more restricted. China’s Skynet control system—a combination of the social credit system and a state-operated CCTV facial recognition network — has created an open-air prison. The 1.3 billion Chinese citizens and 70 million British citizens can no longer make that claim without the risk of being visited by police or having their lives affected. Let what took place in those so-called smart cities serve as a warning.

Roatan should be and can remain free from government aspirations to constantly surveil us and treat us as poetical criminals. The irony is that this island has a long history of people who chose to come here choosing freedom over security. Whether it was Roatan-based pirates or Puritan colony settlers, they came here in search of freedom, not security.

Also the Garifuna were brought here because they fought to keep their freedom in two Carib Wars they fought against the British on Saint Vincent. Settlers from the Cayman Islands who came here in the 1830s and 1840s were also seeking freedom and new opportunities. While security is a very important part of life on Roatan, freedom has always been more important.

Living next to the sea and living from its bounty, islanders have been accustomed to assume risk as a part of their lives. Many Roatanians died doing what they loved and supporting the families they loved. Living on a remote island in the path of hurricanes came with an understood risk — fishing on commercial boats, moving cargo, toiling in the bush.

Let’s not make the mistake others already have.

When I moved here in the early 2000s, the island was simple and still homogeneous. The vast majority of people were born on the island and knew one another, at least casually. The innocence that Roatan once had —maybe just 20 years ago— is gone.

Gone are the days when islanders were related by two degrees of separation: If you didn’t know someone, you knew someone who did. That connection brought a sense of security, trust and comfort. Today, the island is based on three degrees of separation and is a much less comforting place.

The island’s CCTV program is a large, complex and expensive and Roatan has an unfortunate history of poor government decisions. To mention just three of these white elephants: the abandoned Coxen Hole desalination plant; the José Santos Guardiola garbage dump, inaugurated by President Mel Zelaya in 2009 and still not operational; and the Roatan public hospital building, which was constructed for $3 million and will require $52 million to finish.

While those expensive failures don’t mean the municipality should stop trying, they should encourage skepticism toward new ideas. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” the saying goes.

There are alternatives to CCTV government run surveillance. There are already plenty of private security camera systems that are used efficiently when needed. The other sad truth is that our computers, smartphones, and even smart devices like internet-connected cameras, refrigerators, and smart electric meters are already tools of surveillance used against us. These are employed by security agencies in the US, Israel and other bad actors. Let’s not allow the government to take control of our lives more than it has already.

Challenging Road Project Cuts across the Heart of Coxen Hole

The PO-35 passing across Coxen Hole is not just a national highway, it is a road that has the highest commercial use on the island and has to be integrated into the city walkways and drainage. “You need to make it [Coxen Hole] more of a city than a town,” said Ing. Castillo, infrastructure chief of the Roatan Municipality.

The road itself will be 15 meter wide with a 1.5 meter sidewalks, two meter wide cycling lanes. And finally a 10 meter wide motor vehicle road. The construction of the six month contract began in June and its goal is to be finished by Christmas 2024.

It is a road that has the highest commercial use on the island.

The new road will benefit drivers, business owners, increase land prices, create additional commercial lots, and provide a more first glance of the island four tourists arriving at the Juan Manuel Galvéz international airport. “In the end, everyone is benefiting because they have more roads and more urban spaces they can use,” said Ing. Castillo.

Whereas in other parts of the paving projects Roatan Municipality would do the groundwork and preparation for the road, and would bid out only the road paving portion of the project. This time the roadwork was too complex and coordination between the preparation and paving as well. “Given the complexity of this contract, we decided to give the entire contract to one company,” said Ing. Castillo. Elite, a construction company based in French Harbour, who won the bid for the project.

The cost of the contract is Lps. 59.9 million [$2.4 million] and the 1.5 kilometer road project is the most complex and expensive per kilometer the Bay Islands have ever seen. Part of the expense is because of the retention walls needed to be constructed at the site. “Half the road has a need for retention walls,” said Ing Castillo. Whereas prior only in French Harbour and in Los Fuertes the retention walls had to be built. Yet another expense paid by Roatan taxpayers via Roatan municipality was the supervision contract of Lps. 2.5 million awarded to Consultores en Ingeniería [CINSA].

The road rises from just a few meters above sea level at the airport to around 50 meters at its crest at Monkey hill road. The design of the new road attempts to lessen the hills and avoid blind hills. “We are trying to improve the vertical curvatures of the road,” said Ing. Castillo. “We are filling it in some spots and cutting it off in others. It is all about creating a win-win.”

The project is not just a national road construction, but building an urban road and with urban spaces that integrate the road with surrounding businesses and lots. Water and sewer systems have to be moved, and bridge boxes are being constructed instead of culverts.

Urban road project created several very happy land owners.

The urban road project created several very happy land owners. Elite has been filling in acres of land with earth that was shaved of the road. From what were some inaccessible and of little value lots, there are now very valuable commercial lots. “They get the benefit of the dirt and we get the benefit of decreasing the cost of hauling the materials to specific spots,” said Ing. Castillo. Several islanders have become millionaires

With rains and heavy construction taking place at the new municipal dump, there were changes as far as the road paving schedule. “We had an emerging situation from Kix to mud hole with the deterioration of the road,” said Ing Castillo. The Roatan municipality has begun the dirt work on the 2.3 kilometers between Kix and the dump. That is the last portion of the PO-35 that has not been bid out for paving.

Some other road projects were also delayed. One of them is the paving of the 4.3 kilometer road from Palmetto to Crawfish rock that is now planned for construction in early 2025. 750 meters from Próspera to Colonia Smith diversion has been paved and 620 meter in total from the Mall up towards Crawfish Rock.

After a Fire, Three Hospitals are being Built on the Island

Roatan has found itself in a health crisis. On April 19, around 9pm, Roatan Public Hospital in Coxen Hole burned down in a spectacular fire. The fire destroyed 95% of the 33 year old building except for a portion of the office annex.
No one was killed or gravely injured in the fire and 60 interned patients were transferred to two nearby private island hospitals. Wood Medical Center in Coxen Hole received most of the patients and the private Hospital Centro Medico Sampedrano (CEMESA) received another dozen. “All the emergencies were attended until May 10 [for] free,” said Dr. Jackie Wood, owner of the Wood Medical Center who also helped to build the original public hospital in 1991. “My heart was broken and I cried all night. You do not imagine what I feel to see all that work [turn to] ashes.”
The firemen concluded that faulty electric wiring was the reason for the fire. “A couple years back we had a fire in a maternity room for the same reason,” said Dr. Wood.
The spring of 2024 has been full of fires breaking out all over Roatan. There has been very little rain since the rainy season ended on the island in March. Dry as bone trees and cohunes became prone to catching fire and strong winds made things especially difficult to handle.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity to quickly and efficiently upgrade the islands hospital facilities. While the public hospital building was gone there were plenty of doctors, underutilized private clinics, a network of community clinics, a semi finished hospital in Dixon Cove, and there was an 18,000 square foot Adventist center.

Instead of quickly finishing the new public hospital in Dixon Cove, the central government decided to build a “temporary” hospital in Coxen Hole. Instead of using facilities that are available, the government set up tents in hot weather at Julio Galindo stadium in Coxen Hole.

“My heart was broken and I cried all night.”

Another site in Loma Linda area of Coxen Hole was chosen by the central government as a site for an emergency, provisional 40 bed hospital and is estimated to cost 100-150 Million Lps. It has been planned to be finished in 90 days, but due to a complicated, heavily sloped site, that is unlikely to happen.

The Loma Linda hospital site is adorned with a huge poster “Xiomara Sí Cumple,” – “Xiomara does deliver.” In fact after the fire and presidential visit the island was dotted with “Xiomara Sí Cumple” signs. There is one such poster at the Roatan international airport, one in Dixon Cove, one in Loma Linda and one at Coxen Hole stadium. A kilometer away, while central government authorities were erecting those signs, Roatan Municipality completely demolished the burned out hospital and practically flattened the old hospital site.

All in all, the facility that was closest to being able to function as a temporary hospital was the Adventist center in French Harbour. Little Friends Foundation along with Roatan Municipality operated the COVID center at the Adventist center back in 2020. While the second story of the large building was used for consultations and beds, the first story is being readied to function as an emergency center for the emergency temporary hospital before the provisional hospital is finished and before the new hospital in Dixon Cove is completed.

Six weeks after the fire things are far for clear for many islanders in need of medical attention and confusion still persisted. “The ambulances take you from the street and don’t even know where to take you,” said Steven Guillen, president of Little Friends Foundation, a NGO that was in charge of building the Dixon Cove hospital facility. “If you are dying, you have to go to CEMESA.”

In May a woman in labor was asked for money from treatment at Woods Medical Center, she didn’t have the funds, so she was transferred to CEMESA designated as an emergency care center. The transport she was using broke down and she was transferred to another vehicle. By the time she arrived at CEMESA it was too late and she died.

That could have been avoided. The Adventist center was ready to operate two weeks after the hospital fire. The current construction work on the hospital is being paid by the Roatan Municipality and donations. There is a blood testing center for TB and HIV being built as well.

For the time being, nurses and doctors are allocated to several centers around the island. While Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital, it does not feel capable of running the hospital with accredited and paid staff – that is a step too far.

The history of the 20,000 square foot Roatan Public hospital goes back to 1991. According to Dr. Jackie Wood, it cost the government $7 million to build. It could have been much more, but many good willed people helped it along. “Equipment was donated from the United Kingdom government (…) donations from Roatan people and private companies from Roatan and La Ceiba and the central government,” said Dr. Wood.

The island outgrew the medical facility within a couple decades, but the road to the new public hospital has had been fret with hopes, mistakes, delays, and wishful thinking.

In 2006, after 15 years of the Roatan Hospital serving the public, then Mayor Dale Jackson decided that it was time to build a new hospital. Land in Dixon Cove was purchased as “an emergency purchase.” Eighteen years later that emergency still hasn’t been resolved.

The one million dollar land cost paid was an extremely high cost for the municipality. It took the next administration of Mayor Julio Galindo to pay off the purchase completely. There was nothing done during the Mayor Dorn Ebanks tenure.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity.

When Jerry Hynds became mayor in 2018, he was able to secure a $2 million donation from Kelcy Warren, US billionaire and owner of RECO, for the construction of the hospital in Dixon Cove. “When the funds ran out the Municipality started using some of their own funds to complete the gray work. “The original discussions were that the Municipality would do the gray work and they would finish the hospital,” says Guillen. Windows, doors, some of the sewage and water infrastructure was also finished. Roatan municipality spent $500,000 and within a couple of years there was a large, 75,000 square foot two story building sitting on a hill in Dixon Cove.

In Honduras many things are accomplished when local and central government belong to the same political party, that was not the case with National Party in Tegus and Liberal party on Roatan. “ [Mayor] Jerry [Hynds] said: ‘If they [central government] are not going to join, we are going to finish it,” said Guillen. “He had it in his mind that he was going to finish it one way or another.”

In fact the construction of the new public hospital was a joint effort and not only Kelcy Warren’s donation and municipal tax dollars funded it. “May people donated freight, equipment time and helped to reduce costs,” said Guillen. While these donations were not enumerated by Little Friends Foundation, they likely run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2022 the 75,000 square foot Dixon Cove hospital building has been finished in raw state with windows and doors placed. The building sits on 8.3 acres site and there is a basement. Electric, sewer and gas lines could be installed as per requirement.

“There were verbal agreements, but never any written agreements with any administration,” said Guillen. Several visits by central government contracted engineers and architects took place. Recommendations were made, fulfilled, but nothing was put on paper and signed. “Every time the central government sent a crew of engineers they came up with a list of changes. Moving and creating walls, doors,” said Guillen.

The reality was that Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate back in Tegucigalpa. “The idea was to pass the facility into the hands of the Honduran health ministry in a raw state, and for them to finish it up to their standards,” said Guillen. According to Guillen the land title has been transferred to the national government years ago.

After Ximara Castro’s Libre Party won the national elections in November 2021 the relationship between Roatan Municipality and José Manuel Matheu, Honduran Health Minister under President Xiomara Castro, was going well. “We had a very good relationship with him. He brought in IDB [International Development Bank],” said Guillen. That all ended when in December 2023 Matheu was replaced with Carlos Aguilar. Since nothing was written down and agreed, Municipality was left holding the bag.

After the public hospital burned down a political turf war for credit as far as who is building what with whom’s money on Roatan intensified. It seems that Honduran president’s Libre Party was not willing to give credit to local authorities who are affiliated with the Liberal Party.

Then there was the bigger issue. If the new Roatan hospital was to be finishing with locally done contractors and donated equipment there would no way for big players to make money and make themselves seem indispensable. If local authorities would solve their own infrastructure and health problems, like Roatan has attempted, there would be no need for dependency on international loan institutions. That would mean 2000 bankers and bureaucrats in IDB Washington DC headquarters would lose their salaries, and that cannot be.

According to Honduran authorities $47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital and equip it. The around $2.5 million spent on the building by Warren and Municipality is a rounding error of the estimated remaining costs. Now plenty of companies will have an opportunity to skim off the very high top and make money in the bonanza.

Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital.

Local authorities say, that the building could be finished and equipped and ready to open for a fraction of that sum. “We could get all the equipment in very good condition donated,” said Guillen.

That is unlikely to happen. Since 2010 IDB has allocated 35% of its annual loan approval to “small and vulnerable” members and Honduras is qualified as one of them. IDB constantly needs new projects to allocate millions, and tens of millions of loans. Finding donors for a new public hospital is good business for IDB and good for its bottom line.

For average islanders worried about their health, the money, the funding and technical matters are too complicated to contemplate. Yet, the fact is there is money to be made loaning out money. There is plenty of money to be made in the construction of a new hospital and plenty of entities are eyeing the Roatan project.

It is the central government that decides what the municipalities need, often with a faulty understanding of population dynamics and local idiosyncrasies. This is how Roatan Island ended up with a Coxen Hole desalination plant and José Santos Guardiola with a garbage dump in Punta Blanca that never opened. These white elephants were paid from loans and grants by IDF and Inter American Development Bank. These projects are expensive and justify the existence of large international lending institutions.

The sad part is not only about the debt that is unnecessarily created, it is also that Honduras does need government investment in other parts of the country and is not getting it. One such example is the rebuilding of Canal Maya (In the Sula Valley, Mainland Honduras) that was destroyed in the 2020 Hurricane season, yet there are no funds and no one to rebuild it.

Other than IDB, another winner in this situation and all this chaos could be CEMESA. They have secured an agreement with government for treatment of patients. What is not known is how much CEMESA charges the government for these services. CEMESA prices are high, an appendix surgery can cost Lps.50,000 or more.

After the fire, a fund was set up out of which CEMESA is paid by Ministry of Health and Ministry of Finances. “CEMESA don’t have 11 million Lps. This in an insurance fund,” said Doctor Lastenia Cruz, Roatan Hospital Director, on May 29. “We are in front of CEMESA, we are meeting them constantly.”

There is a great contrast with how government and private business deal with a fire, and efficient restructuring. For example Waldina’s Tapestry shop, a private business that burned to the ground in French Harbour in February 29, 2024. With very few resources, but with much motivation, the owner was able to rebuild and reopen her upholstery and sail repair business within weeks of the fire. A great contrast to the paralysis and confusion of the central government after the Roatan hospital fire.

At the end of June there was no agreement what to call the French Harbour Adventist hospital facility. Some islanders still call it the Adventist Center, some call it Adventist Hospital, and some still call it the COVID Center.

Still the Adventist Center has been receiving plenty of non emergency patients. On May 27, Aldin Ebanks, a patient from Coxen Hole, went to Wood Clinic in Coxen Hole where he was told to go CEMESA. At CEMESA he was told to go to the Adventist center. All this took time, money, and transport expense. He was diagnosed with water in his lungs, and treated at the Adventist Center.

Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate.

The Adventist center is now open 24 hours a day and the number of specialists working at the Adventist center has been gradually increasing. “The Adventist center opening will cover all the services required by the population,” said Guillen. “They have greater capacity than the original public hospital.”

There is a plan to use both the downstairs and upstairs of the Adventist Center. The Municipal is making plans to turn the two story building into a fully functional hospital. The facility is actually larger than the original public hospital in Coxen Hole.“We are trying to centralize everything here,” said Guillen.

While the Adventist organization is letting the Honduran ministry of health use the facility without a written contract. Again, this could lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. Who pays for electricity costs, for maintenance costs, or for damages is not 100% clear. “They [central government] should work with the Municipality to set up this [Adventist Center],” said Guillen. “We don’t know how long they will be on temporary basis.”

Some consultation services were decentralized from the public hospital to community clinics outside of big towns. The recently opened clinic in Flowers Bay is picking up plenty of work.

The island’s medical situation will clear itself out in a matter of a year, or two. There is one question that remains and that is whether perhaps the central government and some international organizations, despite what they say and want you to believe, are not there to help you in the most sensible and efficient way, but to exploit your problems to the advantage on interest groups.

Many of us agree to pretend that police, health, education and emigration services are here to help. We are afraid to admit how inefficient, malevolent and expensive these government entities are. The cost of realizing that would be we would have to do something about it. It is easier just to go on pretending.

$47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital.

A New Roads Should Create New Opportunities

Ten or fifteen years ago, the Roatan Municipality’s budget was not sufficient for such an ambitious project. Now, with an annual municipal income of over $10 million, the municipality has been able to embark on larger scale projects. “We have been making roads for about five to six years now, so everyone knew that this was going to happen at one point,” says Ing. Ricardo Castillo, infrastructure chief of the Roatan Municipality.

This summer, the municipality is focused on the Sandy Bay road building. Employing 120 road construction workers, the 8.3 km project − which began on September 20, 2022 in Sandy Bay − is expected to be completed in October 2023.

The nine meter wide road will contain two three and a half meter lanes and a one meter lane for walking or cycling. Using state of the art 5200 PSI concrete, the road is expected to last for thirty years.

The road’s most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key. By the end of June, the Municipality was 1.2 kilometers away from West End with the dirt work.

“A proper asphalt road should last 15 to 20 years without any maintenance,” said Castillo. Islanders got nearly double that lifespan out of their Sandy Bay road, which was originally built in the 1980s. Despite numerous repairs and emergency measures, the road survived nearly 40 years. Since 2010, funds have been available for pothole repairs and maintenance to prevent the road from deteriorating.

Most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key.

White topping road around 500 culverts are planned to be installed in the Mud Hole to West End. “We make them bigger, we stabilize the area around them,” says Ing. Castillo. “We are taking everything that is less than 36 inches and putting brand new material.”

As the road widens, Roatan Electrical Company [RECO] moves electrical posts at their own expense, a process that started in 2018. “It gets a little bit rough, but in the end they do help us out,” says Ing. Castillo. A few RECO posts are waiting to be moved in Dixon Cove. Once that is done, the Municipal can finish sidewalks and cycling lanes in that area.

IDECA won the concrete paving contract for the road. Their winning bid came in at around 59 million Lps. ($2.4 million USD). The entirety of the project is estimated to cost the Municipality and the Roatan taxpayers Lps. 155 million ($6.3 million USD).

In the end, the road construction costs on the island are pretty competitive with road construction costs on the Honduran mainland. The key to that is doing the roadwork part of the road paving projects in house.

On the new and rebuilding road projects, the work is typically divided into two parts. The contractor does the concrete paving of the road, but beforehand, the Municipality constructs the earthwork, culvert, and gullies and sidewalks. They negotiate with property owners and easements, or access issues. “We give it a lot of attention, since we are from here,” says Ing. Castillo. “We don’t tend to buy land to build roads, but people tend to see how their property value could increase.”

According to Ing. Castillo, Roatan Municipality spends around Lps. 20 − Lps. 22 million per kilometer of road and, all costs included. “That, in the end, is the reason why we do what we do,” says Ing. Castillo. “We know the people, we know the work, and we know what to do. The neighbors usually try to help us out with the road construction.” That would not always be the case with a mainland company, whose employees don’t know or understand the island or its people.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt. There is a 2.3 kilometer road from Mud Hole to the KIX scheduled to follow in 2024. The most complex part will be the white topping of the PO-35, the 1.5 kilometer road from the KIX sporting complex to the Roatan Airport.

The 1.5 kilometer road was sent out to an outside company for design, as it is the most complex portion of the island’s main road system. “We want an over bridge and some big construction on the site,” said Ing. Castillo. The sewer and rain escapes are a big issue in the steep terrain of the road cutting across Coxen Hole between the airport and Calle Ocho. That is planned to be done in late 2024.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt.

There are some interesting features of the island’s revitalized road system. The Mud Hole intersection is to receive a traffic roundabout, the biggest one on the island. Coxen Hole center road will have three lanes of traffic, and the road will be reduced to two lanes around the KIX sporting complex on the north side of Coxen Hole.

There are more possibilities of roads the Municipality is looking at: a northern road that starts in West End, continues to Palmetto, climbs to Crawfish Rock, descends to the Pristine Bay roundabout, and connects to the Big Bight road and eventually ends at Plan Grande. All that is possible thanks to the heavy machinery that the Roatan Municipality owns. Municipality has begun dirt work on the old Palmetto to Tres Flores road. The paving for that portion is expected for 2024.

The municipality has gained much-needed experience in the road paving business. The stretch between Island Saloon and the oxidation pond was perhaps the most challenging earthwork in the process of rebuilding the municipality’s road system. The municipal was built in two months. “That was pretty hectic. We moved 1500 tons of dirt there,” said Ing. Castillo.

By the Madeyso store and by the Megaplaza mall the municipal had to move dirt out and replace it with rock to stabilize the road’s substrate. As much as 15 feet of dirt had to be moved and replaced.

New Municipal Buildings Open All Over the Bay Islands

With local economies booming the Bay Islands Municipalities have been upgrading their infrastructure, especially their municipal buildings. With increased revenues in local and land taxes, business and building permits, the Municipal governments have money to spend. The 2019-2022 was a period of fixing up the municipal buildings and constructing new ones in the three western municipalities of the Bay Islands.

ROATAN MUNICIPAL PALACE

The ground breaking on the Municipal building took place in December 2019; the construction began in February 2020 and was concluded in October 2020. Basically, the Roatan Municipality was built during the central government imposed COVID lockdown of the island in 2020.

When private businesses were told to lock down because of “safety” measures against COVID the Municipality construction project was providing valuable income to island families struggling to survive economically. According to Ing. Castillo the 50 to 100 municipal construction workers working on the site supported 400 families. “We used our own people for construction and only subcontracted a few times,” says Ing. Castillo.

The new Municipal building is more than 10 times larger than the 5,200 Sf old one in Coxen Hole. The new building is two stories tall and has 75,000 sf. The structure has 25 offices, a space for a bank and a large meeting room.

The symmetrical building named “the Municipal Palace” is visible from the main road across a huge, 74 car parking lot. While the Muni building was badly needed and is built solid, its simplistic esthetic has brought some criticism. With an immense parking lot and three columns on its portico the municipal headquarters is perhaps more reminiscent of a Walmart than a municipal headquarters.

The municipal’s construction was supervised by CINSA, a Tegucigalpa based quality control company. The building was budgeted at Lps. 48 million or $2 million, but cost Lps. 67 million or $2.7 million in the end.

As the new Roatan Municipal building has opened for business, the old Municipal Building in Coxen Hole is being retrofitted to accommodate INFOP – National Institute of Professional Education [Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional], a government educational school. “The Mayor’s [Jerry Hynds] idea was to move all the services from Coxen Hole and make it [the town] a tourist site,” said Ing. Castillo.

There is still more construction on the Municipal site in Dixon Cove. In June 2022 ground was broken on a 3,500 Sf annex building and additional parking area just south of the municipal building. The building will house offices that are still in downtown Coxen Hole – Municipal Police, Justice office. According to Ing. Castillo the idea is for the Municipal Offices to completely vacate Coxen Hole.

New Municipal building is more than 10 times larger than the 5,200 Sf old one.

The municipal building is part of the bigger upgrade of Roatan municipal infrastructure. The 10.4 kilometer main national road construction form First Bight to Coxen Hole was done also exclusively with local taxes. Only 500 meters was paved with funds of the Central Government. A situation where a national road is constructed, or constructed with Municipal funds is unprecedented in Honduras.

The new concrete Roatan road is expected to last for the next 25-30 years. Ing. Castillo feels that Honduran Central government hires companies that are not based in the Bay Islands and don’t care about the quality of work they leave behind. “This is why we tend to do the work ourselves,” said Ing. Castillo.

Another construction is about to begin on the two-acre Municipal Equipment warehouse and operations and maintenance center in Dixon Cove near the new Public Hospital site.

UTILA MUNICIPAL

On the west of the Bay Islands department 8,000 Utila residents received a 9,000 sf municipal building. The construction on the project began in 2019 under Mayor Troy Bodden. The Utila Municipal building is now a three story tall solid, concrete structure. The entire project cost the Utila taxpayers $450,000 (11 million Lps.) or $45 per Utilian.

The Municipal employees moved to this new location from a two story wooden building built in 1990s when Fulton Jackson was Utila’s Mayor. The old 1,600 sf building was located right next to the municipal dock and was too small to accommodate the growing Municipal staff. The old building will now accommodate offices of the judge, registry office and immigration.

On its front elevation the new municipal building has an array of solar panels. According to Ing. Kerry Samson, chief of the Utila Municipality’s infrastructure department, the solar panels have reduced its energy consumption costs by almost 80%. A significant reduction from Lps. 40,000- 50,000 a month to Lps. 10,000. “The municipal operates in the daytime, so we don’t need a battery bank,” said Ing. Samson, who has been working in his position for six years, first under National Party Mayor Troy Bodden and since January 2022, under Liberal Mayor Alexander Ebanks.

A central staircase of the building leads to the second story offices and third story space that can be used for exhibitions. The handsome white building was designed by Ing. Vicente Maradiaga.

The Utila Municipal Hall was built to withstand earthquakes and the building has a 12,000-gallon cistern. The building’s roof catches rainwater and when it’s cistern is full it supplies the Municipal water system consisting of four municipal wells and two wells leased by the municipality. The municipal pumps run 24 hours a day pumping 40 gallons a minute. The daily output of 230,000 gallons or 29 gallons per Utilian.

There are several other needed infrastructure projects that are taking place on Utila. The municipal garbage dump is an infrastructure project of concern. The municipal has plans to relocate the garbage dump to a site on Jericho hill in 2023. “When our dump is on fire it affects everyone,” said Ing. Samson. In 2022 Utila Municipality has begun undertaking a repaving of 507 meters of Mamey Road with hydraulic concrete.

Impoverished after 60 days of House Arrest Roatanians see a First Diagnosis of COVID-19

He is one of the 16 passengers who are now under quarantine while other 14 passengers, some possibly infected, are missing fearing criminal persecution. The cases of COVID-19 are now spreading amongst the island population that is tired, confused an impoverished by 70 days of house arrest and economic shut down.

The arrival of COVID-19 to Roatan is a result of inflexible, one-size-fits-all health management strategies by Honduras National Risk Management System [Sistema Nacional de Gestión de Riesgos – SINAGER] and Roatan municipal governments inaction and incompetence. “SINAGER from the mainland, they are running Honduras,” said Dr. Raymond Cherington heads the committee helping of bringing some 600 Roatanians stranded on the mainland that have been trying to come back.

While Utila Municipality has repatriated 19 of their own, Municipal Roatan government were unable to repatriate desperate islanders stuck on the mainland. “Once they go to quarantine, they have a hope for a way home,” said Junior Williams, from Utila’s Search and Rescue. “My advice to Roatan authorities is to move swiftly. It’s better than to have them sneak back in.”

Even foreign cruise ship companies managed to navigate SINAGERS bureaucracy and in four different ship arrivals, repatriated 72 island workers dropping them off at the Roatan’s cruise ship docks between May 15 and May 26.

While many wish otherwise, on Roatan where municipal authorities are continually unable to manage garbage dumps, desalination plant, it is hardly surprising that managing a health emergency has proven exceedingly difficult. During the COVID-19 crisis voices of “supporting government officials” and “government is doing a great job” created a false sense of fallowing the only right path. The voices of dissent were silenced, punished or ridiculed.
This downward spiral will likely continue.

The exaggeratedly fear of death based on bad science, and bad health policy decisions by Honduran government has brought Roatan economic misery, depression and soaring crime.

As forced house arrests of healthy citizens near three months, crime is escalating; after the robbery of two women leaving a restaurant at the entrance near Palmetto. “I (…) stopped at the police shack to ask it there were any updates regarding the recent robbery that occurred this afternoon (…)  The municipality policeman I talked to had no idea what I was talking about.  The second policeman was too busy texting on his phone to engage in any discussion” said Gary Chamer, a Roatan businessman, at his attempt to inquire about an armed robbery that took place just a few hundred meters from the police shack.

The island wide surveillance system has been placed with watchtowers and security cameras near major road intersections. Sadly, it is becoming painfully obvious that the police are there not to stop any crime on the citizen, but make sure citizens obey what they are told, regardless of the logic, or consequences.

There is increasing number of intellectuals and scientists seeing the pre-planned agenda which is forced upon the population with virus only serves as pretext and distraction.

“We have a reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements. (…) A disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.” 

Wrote Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in a May 7appeal, signed by several Catholic cardinals, bishops and thousands of professionals.

In a global operation of escalating government control of individuals, top down business takeover and eliminating freedoms Roatan is a side story to a side story. The flooding of fear reporting and suppression of dissenting voices has frighten people who are now desperate enough to accept any solution giving them a feeling that they recaptured some sense of normality. Unfortunately those sacrificing freedom for security will be left with neither.

Thirty Forgotten Roatanians Sneak Back Home

A boat with around 30 people arrived in Jonesville at 3AM on May 16. Their desperate trip was preempted by two months of pleadings, petitions and protests addressed to central and municipal governments of Roatan. All their pleas were answered with empty promises and tear gas.

According to Bay Islands Governor Dino Silvestri nine people presented themselves to authorities upon arrival, another seven were arrested ad put under quarantine and fourteen others have not been yet located some of them in Santa Helena. According to Governor Silvestri, the radar system installed on the west of the island didn’t pick the boat’s signal.

 “It’s been over two months and not even the plan [for returning of stranded on the mainland islanders] has been created, people can only have much patience, and now they are out of it, angry, desperate and broke,” wrote Haydee Muñoz, a Roatan resident.

Tegucigalpa technocrats locked out 20,000 Santos Guardiolans without giving them access to medicine, to supermarkets, banks or gas. 

Since March 16, Roatan alongside other 17 Honduran Departments have been pressed into fit-all heavy handed policy of shutting down people in their homes and hoping for the best. “All constitutional rights have been suspended,” said Governor Dino Silvestri.

On May 16, officials at the Central Government’s – National Risk Management System [Sistema Nacional de Gestión de Riesgos – SINAGER] have decided to cut of municipality of Santos Guardiola for 14 days from the rest of the world. “If the results come out positive, the department will go into absolute curfew,” the unsigned SINAGER document threatened Utilians, Guanajans and Roatanians.

Tegucigalpa technocrats locked out 20,000 Santos Guardiolans without giving them access to medicine, to supermarkets, banks or gas stations. The immune from legal action technocrats were deciding about people’s lives from their offices in Tegucigalpa.

The next day protesters gathered at the border between the two Roatan Municipalities. After several hours they forced down the blockade of the National Police that attempted to keep residents of Santos Guardiola from crossing into Roatan Municipality.

The past 63 days of “Red Alert” shutting down did not allow the islanders or the Central Government to create COVID-19 treatment infrastructure. The island has no COVID-19 testing labs, no ventilators and trained staff to manage the ventilators.

Governor Silvestri announced that $25,000 from the COVID-19 emergency fund will be given to a committee that is coordinating the return of Roatanians home from the mainland. While Utila managed to bring back 19 of its people, around 250 people are still waiting to come back to Roatan in La Ceiba.

Free of Covid-19, Bay Islands remain tied down by draconian laws set by Central Government

“We don’t have Covid-19, but hunger is going to kill us,” said Dino Silvestri, governor of the Bay Islands.

While food is arriving on the island form US and the Honduran coast access to the supermarket has been limited. “If we get this [Covid-19] here it will be 10 years before Roatan recovers,” says Julio Galindo, ex-mayor of Roatan and owner of Anthony’s Key Resort. “We have to do whatever we can to stop people coming from the mainland.” The forced lock-down of the island has only cut of cash flow to the island, it has forced for many employers to lay off workers or put them of partial pay. “The longer this goes on the harder it is for us to get back,” said Galindo. A light at the end of the tunnel could be for the Central Government to consider the geographical isolation of the Bay Islands Department and since there has been no cases for longer the 14 day incubation period of Covid-19.

“We don’t have Covid-19, but hunger is going to kill us.”

Jerry Hynds, Roatan’s Mayor spoke of government official being “receptive” to his proposal of lifting. At a meeting of business owners on March 31, the idea was given of “Cabildo abierto” that would circumvent the stringent national lockdown. 

My hardworking gardener was driving his 14-year old cousin on the back of his beat-up, 13-year-old motorcycle. The motorcycle was stopped by police looking to “enforce” the no-two-men law. The young passenger could pass for 12-year-old, and as a minor doesn’t have an ID, but my gardener was too honest for his own good and admitted the boy was 14. The police confiscated the motorcycle, and then informed him he could buy it back, along with his license in 45 days for 12,000Lps.

This was quite an ordeal for this honest, hardworking man. My gardener doesn’t make much money and works two jobs that are inaccessible by public transport on other parts of the island. As the price of the fine surpassed the value of his beat-up motorcycle, he decided to abandon his commuter in the police yard. He also had to work an extra week to pay off the ransom for his seized license.

Motorcycle drivers must endure the consequences of the collective failure of the Honduras’ legal system.

The fact is my gardener is far from alone. There are now around 200-300 confiscated motorcycles in the parking lot of Roatan police headquarters. These are not stolen by thieves, they are taken away legally. Just because something is legal, doesn’t mean it is morally correct. Almost all of the people who had their motorcycles confiscated come from low-income, hard working Roatan families. Yet they fell afoul of the law.

The motorcycle drivers must endure the consequences of the collective failure of the Honduras’ legal system: its police, its prosecutors, its courts and its prisons. “When liberty leads to the loss of order, then the demand for order will lead to a loss of liberty,” said Dr. Stan Monteith.

Then there are the laws of unintended consequences. Honduras is not the first country to face assassins and robbers who use motorcycles and two-man teams. London, Athens, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Bogota; These cities have seen the criminals switching operations to solo motorcycling and driving in tinted windowed cars.

The law will encourage crime amongst women who will be drafted to drive the getaway motorcycles of criminals. Maybe the deprived of motorcycles drivers, will lose a job and will take up the life of crime to maintain themselves and their families? When drivers caught driving two-men-up inevitably try to bribe their way out of a situation and the unjust law corrupts the law-abiding drivers, will the policemen realize they are enforcing a senseless law? Motorcycles are an affordable means of transport, of the working class of the island. They reduce traffic, and if the ride sharing men are now forced to spend hours on buses and in taxi this will also increase the traffic jams on the island.

The fact is that the collective punishment effort just doesn’t work. A law abiding, struggling majority that doesn’t want to migrate to the US shouldn’t be punished for the crimes of a tiny group and failures of the system. The fear, anxiety and expense that this “security” procedure has caused, outweighs any possible benefits from preventing crime.

But, if you need to have “some new” motorcycle laws that would make life better, I have plenty of suggestions. What about stopping motorcycles that don’t have working lights? What about requiring a yearly vehicle inspection that would be tested at certified? What about checking the tread of motorcycle tires assuring they are safe to drive?

There is another post scriptum to the story of my gardener. Since his motorcycle confiscation he has found a very competent friend to help him with gardening work. The only thing is he’s a 60-years-old man. The fact is not a lot of 12-year-olds are doing hold ups in Honduras and ever fewer 60-year-olds. Yet the Honduran law passed didn’t account for the elderly motorcycle passengers.

After three days, the 60-year-old gentleman had to quit because he couldn’t afford the time or expense of getting to work on public transport and walking. The devil usually hides in the details. Sadly, the politicians who pass these laws that create this oppressive situation only care about the sound bites and don’t really care about the misery they create.