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Money talks. A community is up in arms over apparent preferential treatment given wealthy owners of a cement plant. A construction company with plans for putting a housing development in the community of La Chorrera is caught by surprise.

Residents of the community of La Chorrera, a pristine area of native trees outside of Panama City, are angry. A cement plant is going in next door. Dust, noise, possible damage to the environment all anger locals. A sidelight for investors is that the home building company, Provivienda, seems to have been caught by surprise too.

Provivienda has had plans to build houses in this beautiful little community and now see the attractiveness of their home sites damaged. Who is going to want to listen to twenty-four hour a day trucks delivering material for making cement? Who is going to want to breath cement dust all day long? The cement company states that they will have an environmentally friendly plant but no one locally believes them.

It is expected that Provivienda will have difficulty selling homes in their development.

Hidden in the story of a community up in arms over apparent favoritism to a set of wealthy investors is the damage done to another business by apparent lack of continuing due diligence.

Lesson: when you are going to develop know who your neighbors are and who your neighbors are likely to be. According to La Prensa, March 11, 2008, Provivienda has land and plans to build 3000 home on property that will now be just across the road from the cement plant. It is expected that Provivienda will have difficulty selling homes. What looked like a great investment has turned to dust, cement dust. Due diligence should have in this case included a search of records of ownership of adjacent property. It should have, for a project of this size, included keeping abreast of political developments and activities in ANAM, the agency that passes on environmental impact statements.

While investors can never eliminate all risk in a project continued due diligence can reduce it. Maybe Provivienda can sell their land for an oil refinery now that no one is going to want to live in their houses.