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Bajamar, a gated golf and resort coastal community about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, is the type of development that environmentalists love to hate. The 27-hole golf course, billed as “Pebble Beach South of the Border,” is built on a coastal bluff surrounded by pristine coastal sage scrub, with some of the finest ocean views north of Ensenada. More than 360 Spanish-style homes surround the golf course. Guests and residents are primarily from the United States.

A closer look reveals that nature is not dead at Bajamar. Large swaths of native scrub remain within its 650-acre grounds, and agaves (century plants) grow here and there. Red-tailed hawks on the lookout for jackrabbits patrol the fairways. Bajamar’s developers worked with a team of conservation biologists from the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada to preserve open space within the compound and also the coastal sage around it.

Despite such efforts to balance profits and the environment, however, what happens outside the resort’s boundaries is beyond its control. Nor does any zoning or coastal plan protect against incompatible land uses. In 2005, Sempra-Shell began building a $700-million liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal just south of Bajamar, and has since proposed to expand the facility to 2.5 times its current size. Most of the gas is destined for California, although some will be used in Baja California.

According to Bill Powers, co-chair of the Border Power Plant Work Group, a binational organization that has contested the placement of LNG terminals adjacent to residential areas in Mexico, “The area being developed by Sempra-Shell is either completely undeveloped or [has] low-impact development. They are building a huge industrial facility at the site, changing it from a rural windswept coast to one of the two biggest industrial facilities on Baja’s coast.”

The Baja Boom
During the past five years, quiet seaside villages and fishing settlements along the peninsula’s Pacific coastline have been transformed into the Wild West of Mexico. Rosarito Beach and other boomtowns are filled with high-rise Cancun-style condo fortresses, gaudy narco-deco-styled spring-break hotels, and opulent mansions. But outside the party zones can be found more and more industrial development, buttressed by shantytowns where raw sewage flows freely into the ocean. Garbage washes down gullies when it rains and is rarely picked up.

The exorbitant cost of coastal housing in southern California, combined with the opening of lands in Baja California that were previously locked out of development by legal constraints, have created a land rush, the “Baja Boom.” One promotional real estate brochure calls it “a repeat of what’s happened to California since the 1940s.” The natural coastal landscape is being carved up for residential and vacation developments at a frenzied pace.

Investing in real estate has always been a risky business in Mexico. Investors who purchase a homesite at a high-end, well-planned golf resort might one day learn that their neighbor will be an industrial facility that communities in California such as Long Beach, Malibu, Oxnard, and Ventura have fought to keep out of their backyards.

Throughout much of the peninsula, coastal land is held by ejidos, or agricultural collectives. A few of these rank among the largest in Mexico, comprising more than a million acres, with up to 50 miles of undeveloped shoreline graced by picturesque beaches and bays, as well as some of North America’s most pristine wetlands.

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