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Costa Rica’s Poas Volcano National Park Closed as Precautionary Measure

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Wednesday, April 3, 2024

The National Emergency Commission (CNE) and the National System of Conservation Areas reported the closure of Poas Volcano National Park due to increased gas emissions. SINAC has assured that the volcano’s activity is under diligent surveillance by competent technical tools and entities. With the health of personnel and visitors to the national park in mind, this decision was made accordingly. The institution emphasized that this is a temporary closure lasting two days. Tomorrow, specialized teams from CNE and SINAC will conduct essential measurements to evaluate whether the park can reopen or not. Tourists whose visit to the National Park will be interrupted as of this Tuesday will be able to reschedule their visit or request a refund. Meryll Arias Quirós, Regional Director of the Central Conservation Area (ACC), explained that interested individuals must request via email the rescheduling of the visit or the refund of the entrance fee. Those interested should send their request for rescheduling or refund to poas.info@sinac.go.cr. “If they wish to reschedule their visit, they should indicate to the environmental authorities the desired date and time, which will be confirmed by the Conservation Area. If there is no availability on the proposed dates, the Administration will request a new date of entry,” she explained. Alternatively, should a tourist prefer a refund of the entrance fee, they must communicate this via the email provided earlier, while attaching a copy of their identity card or passport, reservation number, bank account details, and payment receipt. Upon receiving all necessary information, the Conservation Area will promptly initiate the refund process. “We are aware of the inconvenience caused to domestic and foreign tourists due to the closure of Poas Volcano National Park; however, SINAC offers the option to reschedule or refund the cost of the entrance fee,” said Meryll Arias. The population will be kept duly informed about the evolution of these measures, and apologies are extended for any inconvenience caused. “The safety of tourists and our staff must come first, therefore it is necessary to temporarily close and guarantee a safe visit for tourists,” concluded Franz Tattenbach Capra, Minister of Environment and Energy. The post Costa Rica’s Poas Volcano National Park Closed as Precautionary Measure appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

The National Emergency Commission (CNE) and the National System of Conservation Areas reported the closure of Poas Volcano National Park due to increased gas emissions.

SINAC has assured that the volcano’s activity is under diligent surveillance by competent technical tools and entities. With the health of personnel and visitors to the national park in mind, this decision was made accordingly.

The institution emphasized that this is a temporary closure lasting two days. Tomorrow, specialized teams from CNE and SINAC will conduct essential measurements to evaluate whether the park can reopen or not.

Tourists whose visit to the National Park will be interrupted as of this Tuesday will be able to reschedule their visit or request a refund.

Meryll Arias Quirós, Regional Director of the Central Conservation Area (ACC), explained that interested individuals must request via email the rescheduling of the visit or the refund of the entrance fee. Those interested should send their request for rescheduling or refund to poas.info@sinac.go.cr.

“If they wish to reschedule their visit, they should indicate to the environmental authorities the desired date and time, which will be confirmed by the Conservation Area. If there is no availability on the proposed dates, the Administration will request a new date of entry,” she explained.

Alternatively, should a tourist prefer a refund of the entrance fee, they must communicate this via the email provided earlier, while attaching a copy of their identity card or passport, reservation number, bank account details, and payment receipt. Upon receiving all necessary information, the Conservation Area will promptly initiate the refund process.

“We are aware of the inconvenience caused to domestic and foreign tourists due to the closure of Poas Volcano National Park; however, SINAC offers the option to reschedule or refund the cost of the entrance fee,” said Meryll Arias.

The population will be kept duly informed about the evolution of these measures, and apologies are extended for any inconvenience caused.

“The safety of tourists and our staff must come first, therefore it is necessary to temporarily close and guarantee a safe visit for tourists,” concluded Franz Tattenbach Capra, Minister of Environment and Energy.

The post Costa Rica’s Poas Volcano National Park Closed as Precautionary Measure appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

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Since Sunday, multiple rounds of rainfall have soaked the region, causing rivers and creeks to swell and rise out of their banks.

Subscribe to The Y’all — a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state. HOUSTON — Southeast Texas is used to heavy spring rains — but the widespread flooding that the region faced this week stands out because of just how much the rivers have risen. Back-to-back storms drenched the area that includes Polk, Montgomery, Liberty and Harris counties, causing flash-flooding from heavy rain. That rain also filled creeks, rivers and reservoirs, creating a compounding, dangerous problem of too much water with nowhere to go but back out of the riverbanks. Operators for three major reservoirs on rivers in the area have been on high alert as they deal with the slugs of water flowing into the man-made lakes. Part of their job is to calculate how much water to release downstream to protect the dams from failure, which would cause an even worse catastrophe than the swollen rivers. 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Instead, they serve as sources of drinking water. As the rivers swell with the reservoir releases and with other rainfall draining into them, low-lying neighborhoods are going underwater. “You're affecting people's livelihoods downstream,” said Rick Davis, assistant project manager at the Trinity River Authority, which manages the Lake Livingston dam. “But with every release, you can only hope that the water levels coming into the reservoir stabilize and can start tapering back the releases of water and hopefully give folks some relief.” Here’s how we got here and how this system is designed to work: What is a reservoir? A reservoir is a man-made lake formed by the construction of a dam across a river. The dam and gates control the amount of water that flows out of the reservoir. Reservoirs are built to hold back a certain amount of water because the amount of water in a river can vary over time. There are different types of reservoirs; the most common are for flood control and water conservation. Lake Livingston, Lake Houston and Lake Conroe essentially serve as big pools of water that hold drinking water for the city of Houston and the growing region. How can reservoirs contribute to flooding? Reservoir operators control how much water gets released downstream. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without a dam, all the water draining into the river might flow downstream even quicker, said Katie Landry-Guyton, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service Houston/Galveston office. But reservoirs can contribute to flooding when lakes reach capacity and operators must release the water to make sure the dam can keep operating safely. Rick Warner, a superintendent with the Coastal Water Authority, which operates the Lake Houston dam, said that when operators see the weather forecast alerting people of potential rainfall, they can open the dam’s gates to release water before the storm hits. Opening the gates helps lower the lake’s water levels and creates room for more water. He said these so-called controlled pre-releases will hopefully alleviate flooding that can occur with rainfall. “This gives us a little head start on releasing water before the flood water comes down to the reservoir,” he said. Warner said that any opening or closing of the dam’s gate has to be directed by the city of Houston, which owns the lake. That calculation might be harder for a reservoir farther north, like Lake Conroe. If the rainfall prediction is off, and neighborhoods to the south of the lake get hit with hard rainfall at the same time the river swells with an early release, that can create a major problem. Hydrologists and engineers set guidelines for monitoring and matching inflows into the reservoir and rates of release. Each reservoir has a unique set of rules and they are based on historical river data, floods and droughts, said Davis, the assistant project manager at the Trinity River Authority. With some dam and reservoir designs, such as Lake Conroe, when there’s heavy rainfall, lakes can begin to reach higher capacities and run the risk of overflowing. If water is not released, the dam could break. “It could cause catastrophic damage when lakes were allowed to get too full,” Warner said. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, hundreds of dam failures have occurred throughout U.S. history and they’ve caused severe property and environmental damages and have taken thousands of lives. How did the weather lead to flooding this week? The flooding disaster unfolding across parts of Southeast Texas began days earlier, on Sunday, when the first rounds of heavy rain drenched the region and started to drain into lakes that were already full. The Trinity River too was elevated from the start, said Landry-Guyton, at the National Weather Service. Another round of heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday added even more water to roughly the same areas, meteorologists said. Over the past week, 15 to 20 inches of water fell on the area that drains into Lake Livingston, and 10 to 15 inches on the area that drains into the East Fork of the San Jacinto River and Lake Conroe, Landry-Guyton said. More fell in some isolated spots. That’s a whopping amount of water. Meteorologist Matt Lanza, who helps run the much-watched Space City Weather website in Houston, said he was used to seeing 10 inches of rain falling overnight on occasion. But to see heavy rain spells twice in one week was “problematic,” he said. 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The destruction of woodland habitat for hundreds of bird species, including the endangered Gouldian finch, has commenced at a popular Darwin site, prompting conservationists, crossbench MPs and residents to condemn the federal government’s failure to protect the area from a defence housing development.As bulldozers moved into Lee Point/Binybara, which has been the focus of a long community campaign, independent and Greens MPs said the clearing was an example of Australia’s failed environmental protections and the need for urgent reform.Darwin community members who arrived at Lee Point/Binybara on Tuesday morning were met by police and security guards.Footage released by the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory showed bulldozers knocking down trees at the much-loved site.Defence Housing Australia was given the green light to start its construction work a month ago. It had voluntarily paused work for several months while the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, considered an emergency application by Larrakia traditional owners for protection of the site on cultural grounds.Plibersek notified the applicants in late March that after considering the evidence she was not satisfied that the specific area that would be developed met the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Act requirements for a “significant Aboriginal area in accordance with Aboriginal tradition”.Jess Black, a community representative for the Binybara camp, said Darwin residents who arrived at Lee Point on Tuesday were “devastated”.“They have been kept in the dark for months by Defence Housing Australia and now we have seen centuries-old trees bulldozed with very, very concerned community members looking on,” she said.Black said community members would continue to fight to protect the site.The clearing commenced two weeks after the Albanese government delayed a broad package of environment legislation to fix what an independent review found was the unsustainable decline of the country’s ecosystems and species.Legislation will be introduced for a new national environment protection agency in coming weeks but the government has given no guarantee that a larger suite of reforms will be introduced in this term of government.The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, called on Plibersek to urgently protect the site, which was a habitat for significant species such as the critically endangered eastern curlew.“The minister recently made a big splash about saving eastern curlew habitat in Toondah [Harbour] in Queensland, but that same critically endangered bird deserves protection in Lee Point Darwin as well,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionOur Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“People expect the environment minister to protect the environment, not approve destruction.”In a tweet, the independent senator David Pocock said the scenes at Lee Point/Binybara were an example of Australia’s “broken” federal nature laws.“Labor promised to fix these laws, but have delayed reform indefinitely,” he said.“If Labor is serious about building trust in the community, it must act swiftly to make good on promises to halt extinctions and fix our broken federal environmental laws in this term of government.”A spokesperson for Plibersek said the government had approved the development “with a range of better protections for threatened species, including the Gouldian finch”.“The minister determined the original approval conditions for the Lee Point project must be changed to better protect nature. Defence Housing Australia agreed to redesign the plan to incorporate a 50 [metre] buffer around nearby Gouldian Finch habitat,” they said.They said changes were also made to clear invasive gamba grass and replace it with native species and to move access points to Casuarina beach to avoid disturbing migratory birds.Comment was sought from Defence Housing Australia.

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