The company was going to build a multimillion dollar plant (1997 dollars) to process the waste. Instead they just gave away a bunch of land they weren't going t

The company was going to build a multimillion dollar plant (1997 dollars) to process the waste. Instead they just gave away a bunch of land they weren't going to develop anyway. Also just because you own some land doesn't mean it's legal to do whatever you want with it, especially industrial uses like dumping waste. Costa Rica is probably one of the better countries in terms of protecting its natural resources (compared to say, recent events in Brazil) so it's unlikely that they could have just ignored laws. I would encourage you to read the original paper, and in general always go for original sources; they are surprisingly readable if you know what you can skip and what you have to look up.