U.S. Firms Trucked Material Across Border : Mexico Closes Toxic-Waste Dump Near Tecate

Anna Maria Zuniga is worried. Three of her relatives have been ill in the past week, vomiting blood and showing signs of a fever. Other neighbors have similar ailments, she said.

“No one in this house has ever been sick like that before,” said Zuniga, a 17-year-old who lives with a family of 10 in a small rural community about 15 miles east of downtown Tecate, a border town nestled in the rugged hills of Mexico.

Zuniga and other residents of the ranching and farming community known as El Encinal fear that their recent illnesses may be linked to a new neighbor: a dump for toxic wastes from the United States.

From late November until early January, Mexican officials say, a Tijuana-based firm dumped hazardous materials from the United States at a rural site just across the road and up the hill from where the Zuniga family runs a small cafe. A firm in National City helped arrange the transport.

The incident has caused a stir on both sides of the border. Mexican officials are conducting an investigation into the matter, as are several U.S. agencies. Authorities on the U.S. side have expressed the fear that it could be part of a pattern of U.S. firms seeking to dump toxic wastes in Mexico.

Responding to complaints, Mexican authorities have closed the site and blocked additional shipments of toxic wastes bound for here. Mexican officials said this week that the material would be moved to a secure industrial dump and that authorities would proceed with legal action against those responsible.

While acknowledging that some of the waste material was toxic and posed a potential health hazard, Mexican officials stated that there was no evidence linking the dump to the recent illnesses in the area. The 20 or so people examined showed symptoms that were probably caused by viruses or other factors, said Dr. Porfirio Garcia Gonzalez, chief of the Mexican Health Secretariat for the region that includes Tecate. Tests also indicate no contamination of area wells, said Garcia.

“There’s no threat to people’s health,” said Garcia, who noted that the Tecate residents were taken to Tijuana for blood and other tests, and no sign of toxic poisoning was found. “We’re planning to move the material to a safe location as soon as possible.”

In addition, Mexican authorities say that investigators from Mexico City found no radiation at the sight, quelling fears of another disaster like the one in 1983 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. That incident left hundreds of residents exposed to potentially dangerous levels of radioactivity after a U.S.-manufactured cancer-treatment machine containing radioactive cobalt-60 was scrapped and disassembled.

Despite the official reassurances, the toxic dumping incident has caused a furor in this town, a municipality of about 60,000 best known for the huge brewery that produces the popular Tecate brand of beer.

“We cannot allow our community to be a dump for toxic materials from anyplace else,” Mayor Cesar Moreno said during an interview in his office here. “We have enough to worry about just taking care of our own wastes.”

The case has also reverberated in the United States. The Customs Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego and the California Department of Health Services have all begun inquiries into the matter, according to officials.

U.S. authorities fear that the case may not be an isolated one.

Rather, they say it may be part of a pattern of dumping in Mexico by U.S. firms seeking to avoid increasingly stringent U.S. environmental regulations and the high cost of disposing of toxic materials in the United States. Mexico--with its comparatively lax regulations, low costs and long, largely isolated border with the United States--may become an attractive destination, they say.

James Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service in San Diego, said customs officials were investigating the Tecate case in conjunction with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego. The California Department of Health Services, which receives records of toxic dump shipments in the state, has also begun an inquiry into the matter, said Mel Knight, the agency’s chief of surveillance and enforcement in Los Angeles.

Geronimo Esquinca, the environmental official heading the Mexican investigation, did not return several telephone calls to his office in Mexicali. Mexican customs officials in Tecate, who permitted the toxic material to pass into Mexico, also did not return several messages. In press accounts in Mexico, Mexican customs officials have denied that they violated any laws.

Details about the dumping case remain somewhat sparse. Here is what is known from accounts by Mexican and U.S. officials:

Sometime in late November, trucks originating in the United States began bringing the waste materials into Tecate. The shipments were steady, but the volume varied from day to day. Once at the border, said Tecate Mayor Cesar Moreno, the material would be shifted from U.S. trucks to Mexican vehicles, as required by Mexican law.

The Mexican vehicles would then take the wastes to the dump site. The site is on private land, but it is unclear how much the owner knew about the operation. The dumping continued until sometime in mid-January, when officials began receiving complaints that eventually led them to suspend shipments and close the dump, the mayor said.

The material was imported into Mexico by a Tijuana firm called Tratamientos Petroquimicos Mexicanos, S.A., (Mexican Petrochemical Treatments), according to Mayor Moreno, who cited Mexican customs forms as his source of information. The firm stated that it intended to recycle the waste material into useful items, such as lubricating oil, Moreno said. The mayor said Mexican law allows the importation of waste for recycling purposes, but not for disposal.

Guillermo Marin, a principal of Tratamientos Petroquimicos, did not return a message left at his Tijuana office.

The waste materials dumped at Tecate originated from various companies throughout the United States, according to Darrel Duisen, chief executive officer of U.S. Technology and Disposal Services Inc., a National City-based firm that helped arrange for the disposal. In a brief telephone interview, Duisen described his firm as a middleman in arranging the disposal of waste materials. Among other things, he said, the firm assists in preparing the large volume of paper work required to ship wastes.

In the case of Tecate, Duisen said U.S. Technology was under contract to Tratamientos Petroquimicos to assist in arranging the transfer of the waste substances. Other firms actually transported the material, he said. Tratamientos Petroquimicos does intend to set up a recycling facility in Tecate, Duisen said. Mexican officials said they have seen no evidence of a recycling plant there, nor any indication that the dump site was in any way prepared to safely hold toxic materials.

“I can assure you that all the federal and state paper work required is done to the letter of the law,” Duisen said of his operation. The material in Tecate, Duisen added, “wasn’t dumped on a roadside. . . . It was dumped in a controlled compound.”

Duisen, who was in Houston on a business trip, declined to go into detail on the matter, noting that he didn’t have access to the paper work.

No wrongdoing has been alleged against Duisen’s company.

Jeffrey Zelikson, deputy director of the toxic and waste management division of the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco, said the firm had followed the law in notifying federal officials about its intention to assist in shipping wastes to Mexico.

The source of all the controversy--the dump site here--is a quiet place these days. Although officially closed, there is no fence around much of the site. A police guard posted at the dump is only visible off and on.

The one-acre site is situated in a sparsely populated area about 200 yards north of the main highway between Tecate and Mexicali. Scattered throughout the site are piles of waste sand, a sludge of oils, tars and other materials, a 50-yard-long trench, and more than 100 multicolored 55-gallon drums--along with other canisters--in various stages of rust and decay.

Some drums are empty, while others contain varying amounts of materials. Among the drums’ original contents, according to fading labels that are all written in English, were mineral spirits, assorted petroleum products and industrial solvents--including trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent that the EPA has identified as a cancer-causing agent. Other drums and waste material are believed to be buried at the sight, said Mexican officials.

Mexican officials have taken samples of the materials but have yet to release the results of their analyses.

While investigators in the United States and Mexico try to determine what happened here, the dump’s neighbors remain concerned about their health. On a recent afternoon, Anna Maria Zuniga stood behind the counter in her family cafe--less than a quarter of a mile from the dump--and spoke about her three ill brothers and sisters and the ailments that seem to be striking neighborhood residents, particularly children.

“The say the material in the dump could be making the babies sick,” said Zuniga, who was skeptical about official accounts that there was no danger. “People here are afraid of what might happen.”