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Now
With citizen pressure mounting, U.S.
environmental officials have told Mexican counterparts to guarantee
public safety or reject the proposed La Choya hazardous waste
landfill near the Arizona-Sonora state boundary. Indigenous government
and environmental activists at the international crossroads want
to nix the private, commercial project.
Mexico's federal Environment
and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) initially authorized
the toxic waste confinement on Oct. 13, 2005, without a public
hearing. The landfill is a project of the fledgling firm Centro
de Gestión Integral de Residuos (Cegire), headquartered
in the Sonora state capital of Hermosillo.
According to the environmental
impact statement Cegire submitted to obtain authorization, the
project entails building and operating an eight-cell disposal
area just off the highway between Hermosillo and the border town
of Sonoyta. The 247.1-acre (1 square kilometer) site is 25 miles
(41 kms) south of the U.S.-Mexico border in the municipality
of Gen. Plutarco Elias Calles. It is conceived to handle 45,000
metric tons annually of hazardous industrial waste over a 50-year
period.
In the most recent of numerous
protest demonstrations, the non-profit Ciudadanos Comprometidos
con Sonoyta (Committed Sonoyta Citizens) staged a symbolic closure
of the strategic border crossing between Sonoyta and Lukeville,
Ariz., on Nov. 26. The action was calculated to draw international
attention by catching Thanksgiving vacationers returning to the
United States from the Sonora beach resort of Puerto Peñasco.
U.S. environmental authorities
have taken a more diplomatic approach to questioning the proposed
dump. In a letter dated Nov. 7, 2006, EPA Region 9 Waste Management
Division Associate Director David Jones told Semarnat's Acting
Director of Integrated Hazardous Materials and Activities Management,
Alfonso Flores Ramirez: "It is prudent to modify the design;
impacts to air pose a potential risk that should be mitigated
by preparing an emergency response plan; Semarnat should further
assess and mitigate impacts to birds; and Semarnat should directly
consult with the Tohono O'odham nation to determine and mitigate
concerns."
The 1983 La Paz Agreement on
Cooperation for the Protection and Improvement of the Environment
in the Border Area directs the United States and Mexico to "cooperate
in the solution of the environmental problems of mutual concern
in the border area" and to undertake "periodic exchanges
of information and data on likely sources of pollution in their
respective territory which may produce environmentally polluting
incidents." Under the guidelines of a 1999 "consultative
mechanism" pursuant to the agreement, Mexico should have
been informing the United States about every step of La Choya's
process beginning 30 days after authorities had knowledge of
the proposal, because it concerns a hazardous waste project within
100 kilometers (62.5 miles) of the border.
Cegire's first permit application
was submitted April 28, 2005. But Semarnat failed to advise the
EPA in accord with the treaty rules until Sept. 28, 2005, well
into the Mexican environmental agency's permitting process. Semarnat's
evaluation of Cegire's environmental impact statement and the
secretariat's conditions for approval were dated Sept. 6, 2005.
Similarly, the corporation informed sympathetic authorities of
the municipality when it applied for a land-use change permit
on Jan. 11, 2006, but opponents within city hall somehow didn't
get the message until a month later.
Mexican
Federal, Corporate Secrecy Raises Hackles
To date, nobody knows what
Semarnat's procedure will be in response to the EPA request for
stiffer environmental protection. For the moment, Semarnat hasn't
officially done anything, because the matter fell to the municipal
government in Sonoyta when the local officials denied Cegire's
land-use permit application May 30, 2006. Only if the newly elected
mayor and city fathers who took office in September 2006 revisit
the licensing decision will Semarnat be compelled to react to
EPA recommendations.
But one thing's for sure: Mexican
government and corporate secrecy surrounding the process have
raised hackles in widening concentric circles . On Nov. 22, the
Hermosillo-based Asociación de Organizaciones no Gubernamentales
del Estado de Sonora, No Alineadas (Sonora State Non-Aligned
Non-Governmental Organizations Association) conducted a news
media tour of the Cytrar illegal toxic waste burial site on the
edge of the city. The facility has been the cause of years of
protests and several international administrative and legal complaints.
Association members dubbed
La Choya "Cytrar II", warning that loopholes in the
law mean any hazardous residues legally imported to Mexico from
the United States for the stated purpose of "recycling"
could eventually be dumped at the proposed new site in violation
of the spirit of the 1989 U.N. Basel Convention on the Control
of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.
The convention protects Mexico from imports of foreign hazardous
waste destined for final disposition. The group is among many
in solidarity with the Tohono O'odham (Papago) government's outright
opposition to the project. On Oct. 12, a date recognized by numerous
governments as Indigenous People's Day, the Tohono O'odham activists,
whose nation spans southern Arizona and northern Sonora, organized
protests against La Choya at Mexican consulates across the U.S.
Southwest.
The Tohono O'odham are already
besieged by the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall approved in
the 2006 U.S. Secure Fence Act, which would bisect their ancestral
territory. They are overrun by U.S. border patrol and military
activity. Their most sacred site in the traditional village of
Quitovac would be profaned by La Choya, situated approximately
12 miles (20.9 kms) to the southeast.
Influential organizations including
the International Indian Treaty Conference, Indigenous Environmental
Network and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice
have joined the non-profit O'odham Rights Cultural and Environmental
Justice Coalition in consular demonstrations against the toxic
landfill. The groups sent a joint letter to Semarnat's Flores
Ramirez to protest the project. Some 20 individuals from other
U.S.-based organizations also signed the June 21 letter, including
representatives of the O'odham Voice Against the Wall, at Sells,
Ariz.; Mohave Cultural Preservation Program, at Parker, Ariz.;
Just Transition Alliance, National City, Calif.; Grayson Neighborhood
Council, Grayson, Calif.; Escuela de la Raza Unida, Blythe, Calif.;
Children for a Safe Environment, Phoenix, Ariz.; La Cuna de Aztlan
Sacred Sites Protection Circle, Blythe; Tri-Valley Citizens Against
Ruining Our Environment, Livermore, Calif.; Diné Citizens
Against Ruining Our Environment, Dilkon, Ariz.; Healthy San Leandro,
San Leandro, Calif.; Western County Toxics Coalition, Richmond,
Calif.; La Raza Centro Legal and San Francisco Day Labor Program;
Global Community Monitor, San Francisco, Calif.; San Francisco
Bay Newspaper; Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, Tucson,
Ariz.; Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, San Francisco;
California Communities Against Toxics; and People Organized to
Demand Environmental and Economic Rights, San Francisco.
The Tohono O'odham activists
led a 120-vehicle protest caravan to Sonoyta city hall in May
that apparently influenced their governing council's vote against
the project and sparked the wider resistance . La Choya would
be located 92.3 miles (149.5 kms) southwest of Tucson, Ariz.,
and about 53 miles (88 kms) east of Puerto Peñasco.
Right after the consular protests,
on Nov. 17, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ)
Director Stephen A. Owens sent the EPA a letter stating that
a draft assessment of Cegire's potential impact on the United
States failed to address the specific questions of the Tohono
O'odham Nation. Owens claimed that the assessment, commissioned
by the EPA to the U.S. consultants Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.,
failed to take into account the issues raised by the O'odham
in a June 6 document titled "Concerns about the Proposed
Hazardous Waste Facility near Quitovac, Sonora".
The persistence of "significant
information gaps" on "important technical questions
after many months of discussion with Semarnat and other project
proponents", as identified by the consultants "has
led to concerns by key stakeholders, such as the Tohono O'odham
Nation and community representatives in the Mexican municipality
of Gen. Plutarco Elias Calles," Owens wrote.
He was right in classifying
Semarnat as one of the project proponents, although it is officially
charged with being a regulatory and enforcement department. Unlike
federal and state authorities north of the border, counterparts
south of the border not only have been secretive, they have sallied
forth to champion the project and to cover up for its shortcomings.
Semarnat's Flores Ramirez promoted
La Choya as a "resolution for the needs" of waste generators
and transporters during a Feb. 7 meeting in Monterrey, Mexico,
of the EPA-funded U.S.-Mexico Border Environmental Program "Border
2012". Sonora state's delegate in the federal office of
the Attorney General for Environmental Protection, Ernesto Munro
Palacio, was cited by Mexican national newspaper La Jornada as
saying that the municipality has no land-use development plan,
so state officials have already approved all necessary landfill
permits and the municipality has no further say-so. However,
the municipality does indeed have a land-use development plan
and by law should have a voice in decision-making within its
jurisdiction.
EPA Cites Proposal's Technical Faults
Doubts over the technical aspects
of the project were thrown into stark relief when the EPA publicly
released the final Booz Allen Hamilton assessment on Nov. 9.
The assessment gives ample reason to take pause. It raises questions
about whether Cegire's environmental impact statement even meets
official criteria, and especially in regard to effects on water
in the desert.
Due to hydro-geological characteristics
of the zone, any pollution of surface or ground water from the
landfill would flow to the southwest of the chosen location,
it states. That's in the direction of the fishing resort of Puerto
Peñasco-known as Rocky Point by U.S. tourists-and to the
Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez. The gulf is internationally
recognized as the Aquarium of the World, since late oceanographer
Jacques Cousteau helped raise its profile to such high status
that its islands and shorelines were designated as UNESCO Natural
Heritage sites in 2005.
Without further hydro-geologic
information or installation of monitoring wells, the water could
be impacted in Quitovac, according to the assessment. "The
Quitovac community uses the area groundwater for its drinking
water. A two-acre pond, described as a 'spring complex' by the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is present in Quitovac. In
addition to being culturally significant, the pond is also habitat
for the endangered Sonoyta Mud Turtle. Insufficient information
is available to confidently determine if groundwater feeding
the Quitovac spring has any relationship to the proposed landfill
site."
Independent of the proposal's
scant documentation of water resources, its design should be
re-engineered to prevent leaching. Additionally, "The lack
of detailed standard operation procedures for waste acceptance
and handling of liquid hazardous waste streams limits the ability
to assess the effectiveness of the proposed controls and treatment
practices in limiting [air] emissions at the facility. The project
also raises concerns about impacts to air quality from accidents
such as explosions, large-scale fires, and operational activities."
Insufficient data has been provided for determining the facility's
ability "to prevent, control, and respond to incidents that
could result in air emissions and potential atmospheric transport."
The assessment continues:
"The operations manual
lacks the specificity typically required under U.S. standards
for new facilities.
"The project raises a
concern that transboundary migratory birds will be impacted due
to contact with toxic chemicals resulting in their injury or
mortality." Tohono O'odham have reported storks at the Quitovac
pond, for example. "Additional information would be needed
to determine whether there are any transboundary migratory species
that are potentially impacted."
"EPA understands that
significant cultural resources and practices occur in the vicinity
of Quitovac, Sonora, and recommends that Semarnat discuss this
issue directly with the Tohono O'odham Nation's Legislative Council
and Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders to determine potential impacts
and possible mitigation."
"Little or no information
was found for several aspects of the project. Including, for
example, detailed procedures related to the treatment of liquid
wastes and sludges and their subsequent placement in landfill
cells."
Despite the many criticisms,
the assessment and EPA's letters were mildly worded in comparison
to indigenous comments. Not surprisingly given its stake in the
scheme, the Tohono O'odham Nation's condemnation is among the
most strident and eloquent. "We oppose this outright threat
to our O'odham way of life by storage of hazardous chemicals
in our sacred lands and near our scared ceremonial grounds,"
traditional O'odham leaders of Sonora said in a written statement.
The nation's constitution as
a limited sovereign land under U.S. jurisdiction requires its
government to "encourage harmony between members of the
nation and the environment [and] to promote efforts which will
preserve and protect the natural and cultural environment"
of the tribal enrollment regardless of residential location.
With a clear directive from tribal members, the Tohono O'odham
Legislative Council unanimously adopted a resolution opposing
the project on June 7, 2006. Chairwoman Juan-Saunders signed
it, and in a letter dated Sept. 26, 2006, sent it to the EPA
with comments reiterating the position.
Mexico
Unprepared to Handle Hazardous Waste
Mexico has only one commercial
hazardous waste confinement site, located near the northern industrial
city of Monterrey, in Mina, Nuevo Leon. The country is in no
condition to open others. It has no national mandatory standards
for reporting toxic industrial releases and transfers. It has
made international commitments to establish a toxics inventory
such as those in the other countries belonging to the Organization
for Economic Development and Cooperation and to the North American
Free Trade Agreement. But officials and corporate chamber representatives
oppose public interest groups' proposed standards to make the
public register an effective tool for deciding where to locate
confinement sites. As a result, any statistics authorities issue
on industrial toxic waste generation have no basis in fact and
are strictly speculative.
What's more, the 2003 federal
General Integrated Waste Management and Prevention Law is considered
weak by environmentalists, and remains to be fully instituted
at the state level. The law has no regulations written under
it that would require security bonding or other activities mandated
in comparable U.S. legislation. Even if these existed, officials
are the first to admit, the government does not have enough resources
to provide enforcement adequate for achieving accountability.
The federal waste law and Mexico's
General Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection Law
direct authorities to prioritize the decrease of factories' and
workshops' toxic inputs. In line with environmentalists' best
hopes, the legislation calls for reduction, re-use and recycling,
leaving confinement of hazardous materials to be developed as
a last resort.
However, in point of fact,
environmental officials have done just the opposite. Since the
administration of President Ernesto Zedillo and right up to the
present, they have actively pushed a policy favoring willy-nilly
private sector proposals for industrial waste confinement sites,
while taking little action to encourage reduction, re-use and
recycling measures or facilities. This has had disastrous implications
for investors, community life, and public health.
Mexican
Authorities' Promotion of Toxics Confinements Backfires
In the late 1990s, the federal
government promoted construction of a for-profit, industrial
toxic waste confinement at La Pedrera in the rural municipality
of Guadalcazar, in the central state of San Luis Potosi. Local
residents demonstrated against it repeatedly when they discovered
they had been duped about its real purpose; the municipal government
blocked it by denying its building permit; and the California
corporation Metalclad sued Mexico under international treaty
law for lost investment. Taxpayers are footing the bill for the
lawsuit and the toxic waste remains to pollute the community
at the facility, which has never been operational.
Next, Metalclad tried to open
an industrial toxic waste confinement in the rural municipality
of El Llano, in the adjacent central state of Aguascalientes.
Company representatives misled the population to believe the
development would be a municipal domestic waste landfill. Once
the truth came out, residents staged a weeklong sit-in at the
gates of the proposed site. Officials of the municipality sent
a letter to the state governor opposing the facility. Strife
mounted to include a suicide blamed on the division in the community
caused by the proposal. The company dropped the venture. Investors,
who lost money, were furious over both ventures.
In both, the local denizens
of agrarian communities recoiled at the idea of accepting the
hazards of waste generated by distant development that did not
benefit them. They identified environmental and social threats
not addressed in impact statements, and they resented tactics
used to achieve the projects without their participation in decision-making.
Non-governmental organizations became important interlocutors,
since the communities were meeting unforeseen challenges. The
pattern is being repeated at La Choya.
The municipality of Gen. Plutarco
Elias Calles is a centerpiece of the sensitive Sonoran Desert,
an ecosystem esteemed by naturalists worldwide and a focal point
of cross-border environmental protection activities. It is part
of a proposed national park. The homeland of the Tohono O'odham
and other tribes for centuries, it features saguaro, ocotillo
and cholla cactus, as well as rich diversity of wild animals.
The Pinacate Biosphere Reserve, about 46 miles (77 kms) northwest
of La Choya, is a salient attraction of the area, distinguished
by volcanic cinder cones, craters and lava fields. The seat of
government, the border town of Sonoyta (population 17,000), is
the main border crossing for U.S. tourists en route to and from
Puerto Peñasco.
"Sonoyta is an ecologically
clean municipality where there is no industrial activity and
U.S. tourist traffic to Puerto Peñasco is considerable,
with the possibility of developing future tourist projects,"
says former council member Ernesto Castro Hernandez. "We
can't accept first being contaminated and later getting development
promotion; that goes against real municipal development planning."
After numerous protests against
the landfill proposal, area residents successfully petitioned
for an open-door council meeting when the land-use permit came
to a vote. Some 600 citizens showed up. The vote against the
permit was unanimous.
Within the last decade, residents
on opposite sides of the international border have cited the
La Paz agreement to win struggles against developers' faulty
proposals for toxic burial sites at Spofford and at Dryden, Texas,
as well as for a radioactive dump at Sierra Blanca, Texas. The
border agreement may be crucial in the case of La Choya. In addition,
Semarnat quietly has approved six more hazardous waste burial
site proposals: The ones for Baja California and Coahuila states
would be subject to the terms of the agreement, while the one
for Hidalgo state would be exempt because of its distance from
the border.
The Sonora State Non-Aligned
Non-Governmental Organizations Association maintains that a viable
alternative would be regulation guaranteeing public oversight
and strict control of industrial imports and production inputs,
return of toxics to their point of origin, and the best available
technology for confinement of any remaining waste in controlled
above-ground housing that is easily monitored. Investors have
argued that such processes are too expensive. But, an association
statement concludes: "Nothing can be more expensive than
the loss of our loved ones and the deterioration of the environment,
especially when we put economic interests before life."
Talli Nauman is an environmental analyst for the
Americas Program
. She is a founder and co-director of the independent international
media project Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, initiated
in 1994 with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation.
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