For Spanish 
Creating a Lagoon: the Project and the People
by John and Margaret Fleming
Last month we were in the customs office in Sonoyta importing the latest issue of El Futuro. Two men came in, a young Mexican and an older American. From their conversation we gathered that they were importing some kind of machinery. The older man looked familiar, but we couldn't place him until he caught sight of the lead article in the paper with photos of some of the work going on at Laguna del Mar. He was obviously excited and pleased to see it. Then we realized that he was Harry Roehrick, one of the engineering consultants for the dredging project now going on. The younger man was Javier Astiazaran, an engineer for the Mexican company doing the dredging.
Javier invited us to meet him in Puerto Peñasco and said he would take us out to the scene of the project to get photographs. We met him at his office the next day and found out more about his background. He attended the Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. He is a civil engineer, not--he was quick to tell us--a "diesel" engineer (dice el="says he"). He first met Harry at a mine in Hermosillo in 1998, and they have been working together since then. Javier's company is Dragados del Mar, S.A. de C.V., and he has been working for it for 5 years. The company built the San Carlos Plaza Hotel, a 5-star establishment in Guaymas.
Javier is an artist as well as an engineer. When we mentioned that the company logo was very attractive, he told us that he had designed it, using AutoCad. He and his wife Laura have a son Javier 1- 1/2 years old and are expecting another child in a few months.
We met Javier the next morning, and he took us out to the site. We were very fortunate to have him as a guide because he took us right out onto the new reef being built. On our previous visit we had observed the construction of the concrete and rope mats used for building material. Now we could see them actually in place. It was thrilling to stand on this artifical real estate and view the large lagoon being created, 3.5 kilometers long (a little over 2 miles) covering 900 acres. The reef itself is about 20 meters (65 ft.) wide. The engineering involved is truly impressive. Between high tides, there's a window of only 3-4 hours in which work can be done. A trench is dug and reinforced with lumber to keep it level. Then a heavy membrane made of plastic netting is laid down. The mats are piled into place, all tied together. The rope used is a special polyester made for water environments. It will deteriorate eventually, as will the nylon rope, but by that time, the spaces between will have been filled in with sand and encrusted with barnacles. The artificial will have become the natural.
Javier was most gracious and helpful. He gave us a lot of information about the company and the project. The largest shareholder in Laguna del Mar is the Consorcio ASAG a group formed by the Astiazaran family of Hermosillo and headed by Alejandro Astiazaran. It is a diversified group consisting of 24 separate companies specializing in all types of infrastructure construction.
The lagoon project is expected to be completed by July of this year. By June 2001 the entire development of Phase A will be completed. It will include a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course, 325 home sites, 35 home sites on the island to be created in the lagoon, and complete infrastructure. Phase B will then be started. When finished it will include a second signature golf course, a clubhouse, the first 100 slips in the marina, and more custom home sites.
While we were out on the reef, we saw the massive dredge being used to dig the lagoon. It looked so large and heavy that it was hard to imagine it floating, but it does, and it supports two huge engines that came from a hydrofoil used by the U.S. government. Harry worked on it in 1984, and when he became a consultant for this project, he was able to negotiate the sale of 2 of its engines to Laguna del Mar.
Attached to the dredge will be a huge pipe consisting of 10 lengths of 12-in diameter plastic pipe. The thickness of the plastic is 1". Each 10-ft. piece weighs about 900 pounds. As the dredge moves, it drags the pipe, which siphons the sand from the bottom and deposits it elsewhere.
After coming back from the reef, Javier took us to where the pipe for the dredge was being constructed. We talked to one of the workers who was engaged in joining the lengths, using the special machine that Harry and Javier had been importing when we met them in the customs office. The man, whose name was Larry, explained that first the machine slices off the ends of each section so that they are prefectly clean and even; then it heats the ends of the sections to about 500 degrees. When they are soft, they are pressed together with about 970 lb. of pressure, bonding them perfectly. Larry told us that when the dredge siphons sediment from the ocean floor about 20% of it is solids; the rest is water. The sand is later deposited somewhere else to create instant real estate.
Javier told us that Larry is Harry's son. They have been working together for a long time. In fact, Harry told us later that he had Larry driving a dump truck with a backhoe when he was 7 years old. He said that of all the people he had worked with and supervised, Larry was the best at understanding what needed to be done and doing it. Maybe because they are father and son, their minds work the same way; or maybe Larry is just naturally bright. Probably both.
Larry told us that his father is a genius with machinery. He can take any old piece of junk and get it to work. Harry started out as a journalist, but has been in dredging and heavy earth moving for over 30 years. He is 73 years old and still active. He says he has to keep working because he has a young girl friend to support. He has worked on projects all over the Western United States and Mexico: the Mt. Diablo hospital in California, the San Francisco airport, the Larkspur Ferry Terminal in Marin County, a lake in Tiajuana, and a gold mine called Poverty Hill in Marysville, California. The name came about because a lot of people lost their investments in the mine. He has done everything, at least once or twice, Harry says--canals, freeways, airplane hangars, the first catfish condominium on the Sacramento River, Alcorn Slough in Monterey, and duck condominiums featured in the Monterey Aquarium. He has a patent on an applicator to reduce pesticides by 60%.
Harry has another son, but this one works in an entirely different profession. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty, says Harry, so instead of putting pipes and machinery together, he puts people and companies together. He's a consultant for many of the biggest corporations in North America.
Laguna del Mar's scope and vision are impressive. But the fascination for us is in the people who are working on the projects: Javier, the young Mexican engineer, with formal education and training, and Harry, the old American engineer, with only an 8th-grade education, who picked up all his knowledge in the school of life. These two men exemplify the highest ideals of NAFTA, people from different countries who respect each other's knowledge and skill and work together to make big things happen.