Cancun, QR.- The Tulum International Airport to be built by the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) is projected to start with less than 4 million passengers at the end of 2024, which will be its first year of operations, with a cap of 12.1 million in 2053.
This is stated in the environmental impact assessment of the project, entered for evaluation before the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) by Sedena, which reserves the data on the total cost of the work.
The public document released in the Semarnat Ecological Gazette states that the terminal and the complementary military base will be built on an area of 12,000 square kilometers (km2), that is, 1,200 hectares, and will also have an access road that will occupy 3,2119 km2 (321.19 hectares) over an area of medium forest.
In total, the project area amounts to 1,521.19 hectares, on land belonging to the Chunyaxché ejido, in the municipality Philip Carrillo Puertothe so-called Mayan zone, in the central part of the state of Quintana Roo.
“At the end of this report, there is no information provided by Sedena regarding investments or their breakdown,” according to what is read in the Environmental Impact Statement (MIA).
“The airport is based on a tourist type profile (origin-destination). The dimensions of the projected facilities are based on the forecast of passengers and operations”, it is added and it is specified that the infrastructure will have a Civil Military Air Base and the Tulum International Airport, which “are expected to begin construction once the impact authorizations have been obtained.”
The objective of the work is “to promote tourist demand for the south of the Riviera Maya, with emphasis on the corridor Playa del Carmen–Tulum–Chetumal;; opportunely attend to the surveillance functions of the air space on the southeast border; become a timely and strategic logistics node to provide support in the event of natural disasters; in addition to speeding up transfers and reducing their costs between Tulum, Puerto Aventuras, Akumal, Xel-Ha, Cobá, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Bacalar, Mahahual and Chetumal” reads the document.
The selected property is located 21 kilometers from Tulum, Q. Roo and is very close to the layout of section 6 of the mayan train. The connection to the airport by land with the communities of the region consists of a commercial corridor 10 kilometers long by 300 meters wide, in which the construction of a road with four lanes (two in each direction) with a central median is contemplated. , which will connect with federal highway 307. The project is less than 200 kilometers from the main cities of Quintana Roo, it is added in the MIA.
“The two main facilities (Civil Military Air Base and Tulum International Airport) are located in an area of semi-evergreen forest, still present in most of the state of Quintana Roo. Of the total area of the project property, only 513 hectares are requested for change of land use in forest lands (CUSTF), that is to say that in said surface the total removal of the flora could be carried out, contemplating timber and non-timber species that were recorded from the floristic sampling carried out on said surface”, is added on the impact of the project in the jungle zone of the central region of Quintana Roo.
rrg
