The Appeals Court overturned Friday a Guayama Superior Court order last month that halted construction of the Bioculture Ltd. monkey-breeding laboratory in Guayama’s Pueblito del Carmen sector.
The panel of Appeals Court judges — Nestor Aponte Hernández, Carlos A. Cabán García and Héctor Cordero Vázquez — did not give an explanation for their decision, noting the ruling would hold “until this court orders something else.”
The judges apparently sided with arguments contained in the appeal Bioculture and commonwealth agencies filed Wednesday, which says the Dec. 23 order issued by Guayama Superior Court Judge Antonio Frau Escudero “has generated and continues generating substantial damages to [Bioculture of Puerto Rico], the economic development of the country and the members of the community who depend on their work on the project for their livelihood.”
The Appeals Court also ordered the Guayama Superior Court to hand over the “original file” of the case to it in 10 days, citing Article 28(g) of the 1975 law creating the Regulations and Permits Administration, or Arpe. This apparently indicates that the court intends to review the case to issue a final ruling on whether Bioculture’s facility, the first in a U.S. jurisdiction, should be completed.
Judge Frau Escudero ruled on an injunction lawsuit filed in October against the project by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Guayama citizens, who argued that Bioculture officials broke the law in obtaining permits from government agencies. They said the firm’s operations could hurt the environment and pollute the water.
The Appeals Court had given the plaintiffs until Friday at 11 a.m. to answer the motion filed by the company, Arpe, the Environmental Quality Board, the Department of Natural Resources, the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, the municipality of Guayama and engineers José Mateo Colón and Germán Torres Berríos. This motion argued that Frau Escudero’s ruling went beyond the powers of Arpe, which issued a permit for the construction of the facility, and suffered from “serious and flagrant errors” in considering the arguments of parties who did not have legitimate standing in the case, usurping the powers of the Construction and Zoning Appeals Board.
The project calls for the breeding of up to 3,000 Macaques, natives of Southeast Asia, to be sold for medical research.