A resident of Consejo Shores, located about 7 – 8 miles from Corozal Town, called us this afternoon to inform us that the Consejo Shores road is under 1 – 2 feet of water, and that every year for the last three or so years, the road has been flooded, leaving residents in a terrible situation.
Consejo Shores is a retirement community mainly inhabited by foreigners, some of whom have been here for years, who pay a large sum of money to live in the area, we are told.
We are told that many residents can’t get out of the community to buy the necessary foodstuffs, fuel and other necessities, and furthermore, garbage from the dump is floating for miles on the road and children can’t get to school. When the rains finally quit, the water takes 4 – 5 days to recede to the point where the road is usable again.
The resident, who has been in Belize since 2003, said that the road should have been fixed about eight years ago, but the money has always disappeared, used for other things, and the residents have been left to punish with the yearly floods and the terrible inconvenience of being stranded if they don’t have a very high vehicle to try to traverse the road.
According to The Corozal Daily, Consejo Shores is part of a greater community: “The Consejo communities comprise Consejo Village, Wagner’s Landing, Consejo Shores Development, Maya Seaside, Buccaneer Bay, Casa Bay, in addition to our cane farmers and numerous locals who work as builders, yard help, housekeepers and caretakers and who commute to town on a daily basis. Consejo Village includes a Custom’s Post. The Community has one hotel (Casa Blanca).
“Between Corozal and Consejo there are several new housing developments Royal Colony Estates, Tree of Cortez, the Oasis and a Hotel (Serenity Sands). The rural area of Consejo produces fruits, vegetables and sugar cane drawing water from the local water table. The population of the community comprises Belizean nationals and foreign nationals who have either come to retire in Belize or stay there for up to 6 months of the year (‘snowbirds’).”
The Corozal Daily adds that “The Consejo community has grown in size over the last 10 years and now represents a significant, dependable, tax base for the Government of Belize and contributor to Belize’s Gross Domestic Product by remittances from abroad paying for local goods, services, utilities, construction materials. Significant numbers of local Belizeans are employed in these communities in maintenance and construction tasks.”