Dear CEA Supporters and Members,

The past year has been an enormously challenging time for CEA. The CEA Advisory Board became a reality; it's first meeting having taken place in August. The CeMIR program has matured in an exciting way with new alliances and new challenges. In the area of science, we are at the start of a new era with the prospect of a significant grant from the Oak Foundation to enlarge our laboratory and to engage in a regional program to document the contamination of the Mesoamerican Reef, making CEA an important player in the regional effort. The Oak Foundation has indicated that we will have an answer early in December.

The departure of staff members Edith Sosa Bravo, to return to school, and Jorge Luis Basave, who moved to Amigos de Sian Ka'an, has left us short-handed over much of the year, but we have chosen to proceed slowly with our staff search until the right candidates appeared. This strategy has proved itself a worthy one. With the addition of Kate Riley, an environmental engineer, fluent in Spanish, who is our new project coordinator for CeMIR and liaison with North American Wetland Engineers, I feel that the professional stature of CEA has been increased significantly. Following several years devoted to being a mother, Maria Laurent has returned to work with CEA and brought much needed organization to the administration of the office. Maria previously was office manager at the start of CEA. Unfortunately, she will leave in February on the arrival of her third child. She will be missed. We are beginning a careful search for her replacement, a tough job.

As always, volunteers and interns have played an important role. Helen Brown, who begins graduate work in environmental science at the University of Bristol in England in January, took charge of this past summer's water quality project. She completed ninety analyses which showed that the quality of Akumal's groundwater, bays and lagoons have improved significantly since 1997, when the last large-scale testing was done. We at CEA can take pride in the knowledge that the 25 constructed wetlands installed by the homeowners and businesses at Akumal have had a positive effect and that we can enjoy the waters of our piece of paradise with comfort and confidence.

In the coming year, CEA hopes to add at least three new staff members, assuming funds are available. These will be a graphic artist, a chief financial Officer and a mircobiologist. If our proposal to the Oak Foundation is successful, three others will be needed to staff the laboratory. Reports and publications are to be moved front and center next year, beginning with in-house publication of the new water report during December. The water report will be combined with several other water-related reports in a single book. In March, the National Ground Water Association will publish a book in conjunction with its annual meeting in Merida on the Hydrogeology of the Yucatan Peninsula. I have written one of the chapters, which reviews the geohydrology of the northeastern part of the Peninsula. Look for others as the yeas progresses.

Reaching our goal of a contamination-free Akumal by 2005 and a fifty percent reduction in contamination of ground water on the whole of the Mexican Caribbean and beyond by 2010 is a challenging task and cannot be achieved without the continued help of our members and supporters. This year the needs are particularly acute. With the large drop in the stock market, CEA's foundation supporters have suffered huge losses in income and simply do not have the money to support all the programs they once did. To compensate for some of these losses CEA has turned to its internal sources of funds, our rental property, our dormitories, a new EcoNight program in partnership with the Villas Maya and other Akumal hotels and condos and, of course, our members and supporters. If you are a member, it is important that you renew. If you are not a member, please join. The CEA website tells you how.

Thank you for your support during the past years and we look forward to your continued support at this most critical time. The Mesoamerican Reef System needs the help of all of us. No one knows how long we have before damage to the reef passes some invisible threshold into irreversibility. Delay is not an option. With your help we can succeed in shutting off the flow of contamination, look at what has been done already!

On behalf of the CEA staff, I convey our warmest wishes for a happy holiday season,

Charles Shaw, Ph.D.
Director, CEA .