Puerto Morelos commissions a plan to restore its beaches

Puerto Morelos has set aside money to plan the future of its beaches. On September 21, the committee that runs the town's environmental sanitation trust added the first stage of an executive project for beach recovery to its 2026 program, the engineering design that has to exist before any sand is moved. What was approved is a plan, not works, and that is the right order to do it in.

The decision was taken at the fifth ordinary session of the technical committee of the Fideicomiso de Inversión y Administración del Derecho de Saneamiento Ambiental de Puerto Morelos, the trust that turns a local environmental levy into public projects. The committee amended the trust's 2026 annual operating program to take in two projects for the protection and conservation of the coastline, according to the municipality's own account of the session. Mayor Blanca Merari Tziu Muñoz described the beach recovery project as a long term bet on conserving the coast. Earlier this month we reported on the town's annual report, a decade after it became a municipality.

"Our beaches are not only part of our landscape; they are part of our identity, of our economy and of the experience we offer to those who visit us," she said, in the municipality's release. "Our responsibility is to work so that every kilometer of our coastline is conserved, protected and enjoyed in dignified conditions."

What an executive project is

The phrase matters, because it is easy to read more into it than is there. Mexico's federal public works law defines a proyecto ejecutivo as the full set of plans and documents that make up the architectural and engineering design of a work, with its schedule of quantities and enough description and information for the work to be carried out. In plain terms it is the blueprint and the costed specification from which a job can later be put out to tender. Approving the first stage of one means paying for the studies and drawings, and in this case only the opening part of them.

That makes this an early step. No works have been announced and no start date has been given. What the town has committed to is finding out, on paper and with engineers, what recovering its beaches would actually involve.

Who pays, and who sits at the table

The trust is funded by the Derecho de Saneamiento Ambiental, a charge for each night a visitor spends in a hotel, guesthouse or similar lodging in the municipality. The state congress approved it for Puerto Morelos in November 2018. Its technical committee brings the money's payers and spenders into one room: the September session was attended by the president of the hotel association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres, Rodrigo de la Peña, by the president of the Colegio de Ingenieros de Puerto Morelos, Javier Alejandro Hernández Santillán, by the vacation club association ACLUVAQ, and by the municipal secretaries of tourism and of urban development, alongside the committee's president, José Luis Ciau Xiu.

The same trust approved its original 2026 program in January, valued by the municipality at more than 132 million pesos in works and programs. Its beach and environment lines then included beach maintenance and conservation and the second stage of the rebuild of the Muelle de Pescadores, the town's historic fishermen's pier, which was handed back to the town earlier this month at its full length of 114.30 meters, at a reported total cost of about 10.5 million pesos across both stages. The beach recovery design now joins that list. The same session also approved money to anchor the town's sargassum containment barriers, the system we reported on in June.

What the decision does and does not settle

The release is short on the details that would let anyone judge the plan. It gives no amount for either new project, no length of coastline, no list of beaches, no timetable and no name for whoever will draw up the design. Every outlet that reported the session worked from the municipality's release, so for now the story rests on a single source. One of them, 24 Horas Quintana Roo, described the aim as countering coastal erosion; the municipality's release does not use that word, and has not published any study of the beach it is planning for.

Nor is a design the same thing as permission. Under the Ley General de Bienes Nacionales, beaches and a strip of land 20 meters wide behind them form the federal maritime terrestrial zone, so any works that eventually follow would go through federal authorities as well as the town. The design is the step that makes that conversation possible, not a substitute for it.

The mayor tied the spending to the town's growth, saying Puerto Morelos had received more than 900,000 visitors so far this year and was working toward one million a year. That is the municipality's figure, not an independent count. Her argument was that growth in tourism has to go hand in hand with environmental conservation.

For anyone who owns a home near the water in Puerto Morelos, or is weighing one, the document worth waiting for is the design itself, which will show which stretches of beach the town means to work on and how. More on the town and its homes is on our Puerto Morelos page.

Sources: Fifth ordinary session of the technical committee of the Fideicomiso de Inversión y Administración del Derecho de Saneamiento Ambiental de Puerto Morelos, H. Ayuntamiento de Puerto Morelos, Comunicación Social, September 21, 2026; also reported by Agencia Noticias 5to Poder, September 22, 2026, and 24 Horas Quintana Roo, September 21, 2026. The trust's 2026 annual operating program, H. Ayuntamiento de Puerto Morelos, January 29, 2026. The fishermen's pier, Callejo TV, September 11, 2026. The environmental sanitation levy, Novedades Quintana Roo, November 15, 2018. Definition of a proyecto ejecutivo, Ley de Obras Públicas y Servicios Relacionados con las Mismas, article 2. The federal maritime terrestrial zone, Ley General de Bienes Nacionales, article 119. Parque Nacional Arrecife de Puerto Morelos, decree of February 2, 1998. Main image: Alfonzo Buscemi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.