February 25, 2008
Binational
Opposition to Waste Dump on US-Mexico Border
Frontera
NorteSur
Mass opposition continues to boil against plans for
a large toxic waste dump near the Sonora-Arizona border. Granted a federal permit in 2005 by Mexico's Ministry of Environment
and Natural Resources (Semarnat), the planned facility, known as Cimari, would have the capacity to handle upwards of
3,381,948 cubic meters of toxic wastes, with an estimated 45,000 tons of the hazardous substances expected to be processed
each year. If the project attains final approval, Cimari will open its gates about 12 miles from the Mexican Tohono O'odham
indigenous community of Quitovac, and 18 miles from the Sonora border town of Sonoyta.
Organizing on both sides of
the border, activists in Mexico and the United States oppose Cimari on several grounds. Besides its proximity to sacred indigenous
land, the planned dump site is near a desert biosphere, located close to earthquake-prone zones, and situated in an area where
mammoth fossils have been found.
Anti-dump organizers fear a leak from a future toxic
waste confinement facility could even jeopardize the Sea of Cortez and the tourist resort of Puerto Peņasco.
"Underground
streams of water that are in the area where Cimari is proposed flow into the Sea of Cortez (near Puerto Peņasco)," said Petra
Santos Ortiz, a Sonora state legislator for the PRD party." In the future (Puerto Peņasco) could suffer damage along with
the world's greatest biodiversity of marine life, as Jacques Cousteau, the renowned French oceanographer, once rated the area."
Although
Cimari has received positive nods from Semarnat officials and Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours, the project still has not received
a critical rezoning permit from the local municipal government. The company behind the project, Cegire, has conducted three
public meetings in an unsuccessful attempt to convince important sectors of the local population to back the dump.
A
reporter for the daily La Jornada newspaper tried recently to investigate the current
status of the rezoning issue, but he received no return calls from Sonoyta officials or a response to a list of questions
he sent them.
As part of a national strategy for the disposal of Mexico's growing mounds of hazardous wastes, Semarnat
authorized three depositories during 2005-2006, including Cimari. If constructed, the Sonora depository would be able to accept
waste from US-owned companies operating in Mexico.
"I think that our struggle has been exemplary," said Rosa Maria
Oleary of the Sonora-based Citizens Committee for Democratic Change, an organization that waged a battle against the now-closed
Cytrar hazardous waste facility in Hermosillo during the 1990s. "The municipal authorities, indigenous groups, the public
in general and even the local parish, together with environmentalists, have exercised a huge amount of pressure to prevent
the construction of this dump, which was going to be used primarily by US companies."
Source: La Jornada, February
16, 2008. Article by Ulises Gutierrez Ruelas.
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Frontera
NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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(Reprinted with authorization from Frontera NorteSur,
a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source. FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/)
Translation FNS
