Over the last couple of years there has been some doubt about whether it is possible to get building permits in the Cobano district area, if your property only has a NON-REGISTERED hand-dug well. Below we are providing you with the background to this issue and the latest advice from the Muni.
In October 2022 the MINAET (the Ministry of Environment and Energy) announced that it would no longer be registering artisenal water wells that are dug for domestic use. This might have seemed, on the face of it, to be a welcome reduction in red tape. However, the change ended up leaving a lot of property owners in limbo. The Municipal Council of the district of Cobano continued to require either a registered artisenal well, a concessioned drilled well or a municipal water connection in order to grant building permits. Therefore, if you owned a piece of raw land for which your only option for water was to dig an artisenal well - you found yourself in a situation where you might be able to obtain a water source, but you would not be able to obtain a building permit on the basis of this water source.
Thankfully in August of 2023, the Cobano municipal council announced the new criteria for allowing building permits on properties that have unregistered artisenal wells.
If your property has a hand dug well that is NOT registered, you will need to present the following additional documentation in order to obtain a building permit:
(1) A notarized affidavit indicating that there is a hand-dug well on the property, including the georeferencing of the well and a cadastral plan showing the location with coordinates of the well site. The location of the well must be determined using a GPS unit with a certainty of +-5 meters and must be in accordance with CRTM05 (the official projection mapping for Costa Rica). The name and number of the map sheet must be recorded. You will need a topographer to help you with these requirements.
(2) A certificate of microbiological and physicochemical analysis of the well water quality, in accordance with the parameters of quality control levels N1, N2 and N3.
If you need help finding professionals to help you with this process, please get in contact. We would be happy to share with you the professionals that have worked with our clients in the past.
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