Smog Controls Improving, Mexico Says

A delegation of Mexican environmental officials delivered assurances to local, state and federal clean-air authorities Wednesday that their country would not become a haven for polluters under a proposed free-trade agreement.

A key argument against the North American Free Trade Agreement comes from environmentalists, who worry that U.S. manufacturers would move more facilities--and jobs--to Mexico, allowing industry to avoid American restrictions on emissions and hazardous waste.

The Mexican group was out to counter such fears. In a conference room at the South Coast Air Quality Management District in El Monte, the air pollution coordinator for smog-plagued Mexico City outlined tough rules already in place and more to come. The environmental protection agencies of both countries also are working to harmonize regulations along the 2,000-mile border. A draft of the border program is scheduled for release in June.

If an American company relocates to avoid restrictions on pollution, “it’s postponing the day of reckoning for one or two years at most,” said Fernando Menendez Garza, the air quality coordinator for Mexico City Mayor Manuel Camacho, who holds a seat in the Mexican Cabinet.

U.S. authorities said they came away impressed--as they wanted to be, given their concern over oft-repeated perceptions that this country’s clean air regulations hurt the American economy.

“I think the will is there,” said James Morgester, compliance chief for the state Air Resources Board.

“These guys are worse than we are,” said Henry W. Wedaa, vice chairman of the AQMD’s governing board.

If the regulatory climate in Mexico becomes comparable to that in the United States, “it does eliminate one incentive to relocate,” said one source associated with the furniture-making industry, which is often cited as a field where regulations have contributed to flight from the local four-county area under the AQMD’s regulation.

Still, though the Mexicans are talking tough, “I don’t place a lot of confidence in their enforcement,” the source said.

The Mexican government has taken dramatic steps to curb smog. After a winter punctuated by spells of toxic air pollution, a Pemex oil refinery in northwestern Mexico City was shut down. The government has outfitted 3,500 antiquated buses with catalytic converters. About 7,400 acres of expropriated land have been converted to greenbelt.

But cynicism has taken root and is growing there. A requirement that drivers leave their cars home one day a week is often circumvented by families who simply buy a second car; gasoline consumption has remained constant since the program took effect more than a year ago. And some of the factories on the government’s list of those closed were only temporarily out of operation.

For now, Mexico is “certainly behind us in the amount and quality of regulations,” said the AQMD’s Wedaa. “Ultimately they should try to meet our regulations and be as tough as we are.

“But we’re not pressuring them,” he added. “We think we should discuss this in a nice way as opposed to carrying a big stick, at this juncture at least.”

Menendez conceded that Mexico’s history of lax regulation makes environmentalists’ fears of a pollution sanctuary understandable. “This was conceivable four or five years ago,” he said.

But he argued that the pending free trade agreement would actually help reduce pollution in his country.

“The plants were built in the ‘40s and ‘50s, when smoking (factories were) a symbol of employment,” Menendez said. “If we force them to compete internationally, they will have to modernize.”