by Kelly Simmons, Managing Editor and Senior Writer
A U.S. report on the border environment received in-depth coverage in the Chihuahua news during September, in addition to stories covering the planned low-level nuclear waste storage site near the border in Texas:
According to an article in El Norte, a July, 1996 U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) report on the environmental problems along the 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico border characterizes the situation as posing a serious health risk to residents as well as to the local environment. The report titled " Environmental Infrastructure needs in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region" was undertaken at the request of the Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. It concludes that nearly $8 billion dollars needs to be invested over the next 10 years in order to address the pressing environmental problems of the region.
The report cites examples of several Mexican cities along the border such as Matamoros and Ciudad Juarez where, for example, only 56 and 84 percent, respectively, of all residential homes have connections to a wastewater system and where there is a lack of adequate treatment plants for handling residential wastewater. The report also delineates the need for independent capital financing and access to experience in planning and managing infrastructure projects. It blames the development of the current environmental degradation on rapid economic, industrial and population expansion along the border during the past two decades which led to a gap between the residential and industrial demand for services and adequate infrastructure to meet those demands, such as drinking water systems, garbage collection services and solid waste disposal systems.
The population along the border has grown from 4 to 10 million residents in the past 20 years with the majority of the population concentrated in 14 cities. San Diego/Tijuana alone has absorbed 1/3 of that growth, while the sister cities of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez, Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, McAllen/Reynosa and Brownsville/Matamoros have absorbed another third. According to the report, the Mexican side of the border currently has the capacity to treat only 34 percent of its wastewater. In addition, the majority of treatment plants are not well maintained and lack adequate resources. The report cites the example of Mexicali and Calexico which have contributed to the serious contamination of the Colorado River. The 700,000 residents and more than 200 industrial plants in Mexicali have exceeded the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant and untreated wastewater is commonly discharged into the Colorado. The report also notes that groundwater supplies for Mexican border cities are vulnerable to the risks posed by industries discharging untreated hazardous industrial waste into water supplies and cites cases in Matamoros and Reynosa, where in Reynosa included among 700 illegal waste collectors are those who discharge into the Rio Grande.
The report recognizes the efforts being made by governments on both sides of the border to address some of the most serious environmental problems, for example the creation of the bi- national North American Development Bank (NADBank) to fund infrastructure projects along the border. However, border cities still confront limitations. They cite the example of recent plans to finance and construct an $8 million wastewater treatment plant in Ensenada that were postponed when analysts with the NADBank and the Baja California government pointed out revisions necessary to comply with NADBank's credit requirements. There was, for example, the problem that the selected site for the plant and the plant's capacity were inadequate.
The GAO report states that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has invested $520 million in environmental protection activities between 1991 and 1995, should focus its activities on the biggest needs in the region and also recommends that the EPA push ahead with its work on an inventory of environmental conditions along the border and continue to assisting the border communities with the environmental program they have already announced - "US/Mexico Border XXI Program".
In another public forum regarding the proposed low level nuclear waste storage site to be located outside of Sierra Blanca, Texas, hearing officers in El Paso heard testimony in support of the facility as well as against it. Led by public officials from El Paso city and county government as well as Juarez City Council member Jose Luis Rodriguez, the opposition stated that the site could endanger the area's water supply. Several environmental groups including Greenpeace, the Group of 100, and the International Environmental Alliance of the Bravo participated in a protest that drew 250 against the proposed facility in conjunction with the hearing.
Meanwhile the fact that key reports regarding the facility have not been translated into Spanish has angered some, including a Chihuahuan federal legislator, who say Spanish-speaking border residents are being denied the opportunity for full participation in the debate. A Texas state environmental assessment of the proposed site was provided only in English. Chihuahua Senator Luis Alvarez who is president of the Mexican Senate's environmental commission has objected to the lack of information in Spanish. One of his aides, Anna Silvia Arrocha, stated in an El Paso Times article that since the issue affects not only American people but Mexican people also, the Senator has asked that all information be available in English and Spanish. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) which published the assessment decided not to translate the 450 page document because other technical documents from other agencies were also not translated. The State TNRCC agreed in its study with the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority's 28 volumes of technical reports declaring the project to be safe. The Authority is applying for the operating permit for the project.
In related news, Mexico's Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Fisheries Agency, (Secretaria del Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, or Semarnap) finished a technical document on the project for Mexico's National Water Commission (Comision Nacional del Agua, CNA) and the National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Security (Comision Nacional de Seguridad Nuclear y Salvaguardias, CNSNS) which was released in early September. The study for the two agencies has concluded that the Sierra Blanca project does not pose a risk to Mexico.
A radiation biologist with a degree in biophysics and professor of biology at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. John Jagger, wrote in a guest column in the El Paso Times that the proposed site does not pose a health or environmental risk because the waste is all solid in form and is encased in canisters with thick steel-reinforced concrete walls which is then buried 30 feet underground and is monitored for 100 years. Almost all of the waste has a short half-life so that it will have decayed to the same level of radioactivity as the natural soil within 300 years. He asserts most of Sierra Blanca's 12 inches of yearly rainfall evaporates and that no surface water from Sierra Blanca ever reaches the Rio Grande. Water in the 700 foot deep water table takes 20,000 years to reach the Rio Grande. Finally he states that over 100 scientific and engineering studies of the Sierra Blanca site by a wide variety of specialists have shown it to be safe.
For more information on this issue see the September 1, 1996 FNS story, Mexico Opposes Border Nuclear Waste Site.
Sources: El Norte, Diario de Juarez, El Paso Times