Border Boom Feeding Hazardous-Waste Ills : U.S., Mexican Environmental Agencies Push to Quantify Problems and Identify Polluters

Mexican and U.S. environmental authorities have launched a joint campaign to identify and control the toxic waste generated by the Mexican border region’s booming international assembly-plant and manufacturing industry.

Among government regulators on both sides of the international boundary, recognition is growing that hazardous refuse from the more than 1,500 border plants--known as maquiladoras-- could pose a serious danger to the area’s land, water and air.

But considerable mystery shrouds the boundaries of the problem: Although it is clear that the maquiladora industry produces substantial hazardous waste, it is also evident that relatively little is being treated legally in Mexico. And U. S. records indicate that only a small amount is being shipped back legally to the United States, the route that Mexican officials say is preferred.

“We want to get the facts; we want to know how much (waste) is being generated and where it’s going,” said Allyn M. Davis, director of hazardous-waste management for the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in Dallas, which has responsibility for the border states of Texas and New Mexico. “Pollution knows no boundaries,” added Davis in discussing the threat for both nations.

On the U. S. side, Davis said, regulators plan to be “turning up the heat”--increasing inspections at the border and elsewhere--to determine if wastes from Mexico are entering the United States legally or illegally.

In Mexico, where the environmental movement is still embryonic, there is also a strong push to quantify the problem and identify polluters, though critics of the government policies say that authorities are unlikely to do anything to undermine the thriving border industries that have emerged as one of the few bright spots of the economy.

The Mexican government passed a sweeping new set of environmental laws last year--based largely on U. S. statutes--that require, among other things, that waste generators report and track hazardous materials, and that they submit plans detailing methods of disposal. Violators could face temporary or permanent shutdowns, fines of up to $100,000, and jail terms.

“We are conscious of the situation and working to improve it,” said Rene Altamirano Perez director general of prevention and control of environmental pollution for the Mexican environmental agency, the Ministry of Urban Development and Ecology, known by its Spanish acronym as SEDUE. “I believe that the maquiladora industry, with some exceptions, is aware of the law and is conscious that any damage will not only affect them, but will occur in a binational setting,” Altamirano said in a telephone interview from Mexico City.

Loopholes Acknowledged

Previous Mexican law, he acknowledged, was filled with significant loopholes that may have contributed to illegal dumping of waste.

Mexican and U. S. environmental officials said they are working together on the matter, sharing information and expertise and appearing jointly at sessions aimed at informing the industry. Environmental officials from the two governments are working on a manual explaining the range of regulations governing toxic wastes in the maquiladora industry, Altamirano said.

There is no question that the plants, which assemble everything from toys to video games to vehicle parts to foodstuffs, create a considerable amount of toxic trash, including solvents, heavy metals, plastics, dyes, paints and resins. But the precise volume of such wastes remains unknown.

Much of the material reportedly is being dumped illegally south of the border, potentially damaging water supplies on both sides of the international boundary. “The question is, what is happening to all these wastes?” asked Roberto Sanchez, who has studied the issue from his post as an instructor at the College of the Northern Border, a Tijuana-based research institution. “The easiest and cheapest thing for the industry is just to get rid of it in Mexico.”

The industry, Sanchez said, has been hesitant to provide information on the matter, frequently denying that toxic material was produced or contending that wastes were being recycled or otherwise disposed of properly.

Few Would Comment

A number of maquiladoras contacted by The Times either declined to comment or denied that hazardous material was produced. Jose Antonio Gonzalez Ibarra, director of operations at Matsushita, the Japanese giant that is one of the city’s largest plant’s employing about 2,500 workers, said the facility produced no toxic substances, and that all wastes were properly recycled.

Scattered discoveries of toxic dumps in Mexico have been traced to the maquiladora industry, and a number of plants have been fined and even shut down for disposing of hazardous material illegally. But critics say that the Mexican environmental agency, SEDUE, is ill-equipped, understaffed and too subject to corruption to stem the problem, a viewpoint disputed by SEDUE representatives.

Some also question the willingness of Mexican authorities to clamp down on an industry that is seen as increasingly important to the nation’s economic well-being. Although cheap labor is certainly the key attraction of the border region, researchers say a number of U.S. firms--notably in the furniture-making and fiberglass-manufacturing fields--have relocated to Mexico in part because of a lack of environmental controls.

Mexican authorities say there is no hesitancy to take direct action against polluters.

Violators Not Identified

More than a dozen maquiladoras in Tijuana have been fined or partially closed for environmental infractions in 1989, according to Alfonso Cota Amaral, chief officer in Tijuana for SEDUE. One firm, a fiberglass manufacturer that recently relocated from the Los Angeles area, was fined more than $7,500 last month for dumping potentially hazardous fibers into the city sewage system, Cota said. He declined to name any of the firms, a policy that Cota said is a matter of privacy, but one that has generated criticism.

During a recent industry forum, a Tijuana journalist asked Cota if he weren’t being an accomplice by refusing to release the names of violators. He denied the accusation and stressed his commitment to preventing illicit disposal.

“We don’t want anyone coming to our country to dump their wastes,” Cota said.

That desire, however, is tempered by economic realities: The Mexican environmental agency has a staff of seven inspectors in Tijuana to cover an area that has more than 450 maquiladoras, among other waste generators. Recent cutbacks reduced the number of SEDUE office telephone lines in Tijuana to one, said Cota, who also apologized for not having business cards--another victim of budget cuts, he said.

“Unfortunately,” Cota said, “we don’t have a Superfund.”

A frequent depository of wastes from the maquiladora industry, according to regulators on both sides of the border, is the New River, which flows from Baja California into California’s Imperial Valley and is considered one of the most polluted waterways in the United States. In another case of toxic dumping, a 1982 outbreak of illness among residents of a Tijuana suburb was traced to releases of lead and other material from five nearby plants, according to a study by a Tijuana researcher.

Country of Origin

Mexican law requires that most maquiladora waste be shipped back to its country of origin--usually the United States. Some waste may also be recycled, but the small number of recycling facilities licensed to handle hazardous materials--seven nationwide, including one in Tijuana--means that recycling of toxic material is not a viable alternative for most of the industry, experts say.

U. S. authorities say the bulk of the waste material probably is not coming back into the United States--at least not legally. Such shipments must be reported to the EPA, but agency officials say only a small amount of waste is being imported legally from Mexico. There have only been 12 shipments into California and Arizona in all of 1989, according to the EPA.

“It has to be going someplace,” said Kathleen Shimmin, chief of the office of health and emergency planning with the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco, which is responsible for California and Arizona.

Even the maquiladora industry’s greatest defenders acknowledge that unauthorized dumping has been a problem. “There’s no question that hazardous waste ends up where it’s not supposed to be,” said Dan Pegg, San Diego-based president of the Border Trade Alliance, a group that includes representatives of the maquiladora industry. “In the past you’d pay someone to take the stuff away, and you’d assume he was handling it properly. And they would take it down the street and dump it.”

One area where officials acknowledge that there has been illicit dumping, possibly from the maquiladora industry, is the sprawling Tijuana municipal dump near the city’s southernmost neighborhoods. Jose Angel Gomez, a guard at the dump for four years, said he believes he became ill two years ago from toxic material discarded at the dump, which covers several hundred acres and is scavenged each day by hundreds of residents reclaiming scrap for sale.

“For a while, trucks would come here and dump toxics,” said Gomez, who lost a hand in a construction accident when he was a teen-ager. “I used to get dizzy. I still feel it sometimes.”

However, Gomez and environmental officials said the illicit dumping stopped more than a year ago, when authorities cracked down. Still, rusted 55-gallon drums bearing faded labels of U. S. chemical companies are present throughout the dump.

Smaller Firms Implicated

The maquiladora industry maintains that most illicit dumping involves smaller firms. Among other things, representatives say, the larger companies are too concerned about liability on both sides of the border should any health or environmental damage be traced to their plants.

“We want to obey the law; we want to dispose of this material properly,” said Kurt Honold, president of the Maquiladora Industry Assn. in Tijuana.

As the maquiladoras continue to multiply, experts say, the environmental issue is likely to be more and more in the forefront. “I think that this (disposal of waste) is the most important issue facing the industry today,” said Gilbert Partida, a San Diego attorney whose firm represents maquiladoras.

Mexico’s estimated 1,800 maquiladora plants, including about 450 in Tijuana, now employ more than 500,000 people, among them about 60,000 in Tijuana. The facilities now rank as Mexico’s second-largest generator of foreign revenue after the petroleum industry. The maquiladora industry is concentrated in border communities, notably Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Tex., although the plants have also set up shop in the Mexican interior.

Agreement Approved in 1965

The industry was created in 1965 after the U. S. and Mexican governments approved laws and regulations allowing foreign investors, mostly from the United States, to take advantage of the huge pool of cheap labor in Mexico, as well as the border’s proximity to U. S. markets. Mexico allows operators to take U. S.-produced raw materials, equipment and components into the nation without paying duties. Upon exporting finished products to the United States, also without paying Mexican duty, U.S. tariff breaks allow maquiladora representatives to pay duty only on the value “added” in Mexico.

In recent years, with the Mexican government increasingly viewing the industry as one of its few economic hopes, many regulatory and paper-work barriers have been eased, contributing to the existing boom. That is evident in the so-called “Industrial City” here, which features block after block of squat, one-story, U.S.-style manufacturing facilities, many of the largest representing Japanese firms such as Sanyo, Matsushita and Sony, where televisions, videocassette recorders and other items are mass-produced for the U. S. market.

Whether Mexico’s new regulatory laws, combined with joint U. S. action, will curb illegal disposal of maquiladora waste remains to be seen. “There is no question that it (illicit dumping) has happened before, both here, and, to a greater extent, in the United States,” said Roberto Sanchez, the researcher here for the College of the Northern Border. “What’s important now is to see what will happen in the future, whether the industry will accept the controls.”

NUMBER OF MAQUILADORA PLANTS IN TIJUANA 1983: 140 1984: 167 1985: 203 1986: 267 1987: 317 1988: 388 1989: 450 (ESTIMATED) SOURCE: Industry and government figures.

TIJUANA WORK FORCE

TIJUANA YEAR WORKERS 1983 19,239 1984 24,473 1985 24,815 1986 31,793 1987 40,409 1988 51,496 1989 60,000