The Spanish hotel chain Sol Meliá has won Mexican government approval to build a Caribbean coastal resort that opponents say will threaten nesting grounds of loggerhead and Atlantic green sea turtles. In a decision issued Nov. 10, the National Ecology Institute, approved Sol Meliá’s plans for luxury accommodations at X’cacel, about 75 miles (125 kms) south of Cancún in an area of Quintana Roo state known as the Riviera Maya. Quintana Roo has worked hard to promote tourism development of the 60-mile (100-km) corridor from Cancún south to the Mayan ruins of Tulúm. But the effort has encountered environmental opposition. Sol Meliá in particular has drawn fire for its plans, which call for five hotels with a total of 1,451 rooms. Greenpeace Mexico...
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The U.S. Congress has approved a controversial bill authorizing funds for a new private treatment facility in Tijuana, Mexico to prevent cross-border sewage flows. The bill directs the U.S. State Department to renegotiate a treaty with Mexico requiring that raw sewage flowing north across the border be treated on the U.S. side. It also authorizes $156 million over the next five years to pay Bajagua, a private firm, to treat sewage generated in Mexico to prevent the Tijuana-area overflows that have sent sewage streaming into South San Diego County. Bajagua will pay for construction of the $84 million project and will sell reclaimed water from the plant to Mexican industrial users. EPA officials had opposed the Bajagua facility, favoring instead a plan to...
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Peruvian authorities have fined the Argentine oil company Pluspetrol $500,000 for last month’s oil spill in the Marañon River in the northern Peruvian Amazon region. Peru’s Supervisory Organism for Energy Investment (Osinerg) determined that Pluspetrol is responsible for the accident, which occurred Oct. 3 when a Navy transport barge contracted by the oil company sank, spilling some 5,000 barrels of crude oil into the river. Environmental groups and local mayors have criticized what they see as Pluspetrol’s inadequate contingency plans and slow clean-up efforts. According to company officials, some 600 barrels of oil have been recovered. Early this month, company crews still were removing oil from the barge, which remained in the river. Pluspetrol has hired the consulting firm Walsh International to study the...
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A Spanish firm has become the latest waste-management company to file a complaint against Mexico at the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington, D.C. Madrid-based Técnicas Medioambientales seeks unspecified compensation from the Mexican government, claiming it sustained investment losses when its wholly-owned Mexican subsidiary, Técnicas Medioambientales de México S.A. de C.V. (Tecmed), was not allowed to operate a hazardous waste confinement in Hermosillo, capital of the northwestern state of Sonora. The court received the complaint on Aug. 28, the same day a three-judge ICSID panel ordered Mexico to pay $16.7 million to Newport Beach, California-based Metalclad Corp. The award was meant to offset losses Metalclad incurred on a waste site in San Luis...
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The orange waste of juice producer Del Oro has attracted further controversy in Central America. Still smarting from the bad press it got in Costa Rica for helping revive deforested lands with composted piles of peel, the British-owned company is now at the center of a pollution scare in Belize. (See “Costa Rican orange-peel project turns sour”—EcoAméricas, June ‘00.) Heavy rains dumped on Belize by Hurricane Keith, and earlier downpours in June and July, washed wastewater from a large orange-peel dump site belonging to Del Oro into a neighboring river. The North Stann Creek is the main water source of the southern seaside town of Dangriga, where reports of a “strong citrus-like odor” from the river have prompted shut downs...
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