Toxic Burner Heats Debate in Tijuana, S.D. : Environment: Mexico’s first commercial toxic waste incinerator is to start operating this summer. Foes on both sides of the border fear that the plant, near a densely populated area, could cause a catastrophe.

Mexico’s first commercial toxic waste incinerator occupies an incongruously scenic spot in the green hills by the coastal Ensenada highway, where it is scheduled to start burning hazardous wastes this summer.

The high-tech facility is only 5 miles from the San Diego-Tijuana border and 4 miles from Playas de Tijuana--a middle-class beach neighborhood where housewives, doctors, academics and ecological activists have united in a fight to stop the incinerator.

The campaign has spread across the border. Opponents charge that the incinerator’s location near a densely populated urban expanse could lead to a toxic catastrophe if there is an earthquake, transportation mishap or operating error. They also fear long-term health risks from emissions from the plant, operated by Chemical Waste Management, an Illinois-based firm operating with a Mexican partnership.

The company and U.S. and Mexican environmental officials insist that incineration is a safe procedure, and they describe the Tijuana facility as a small operation developed with the highest possible review standards.

But, with only weeks left before the scheduled start of an equipment testing period, the opponents find that claim incredible: the Mexican equivalent of the EPA, SEDUE (Secretariat of Urban Development and the Environment), has not yet made public a report on the project’s environmental impact.

“It seems that there are two sides, SEDUE and the people, when we should be united,” said Marta Rocha, head of Housewives of Playas de Tijuana, who last weekend led hundreds of people in a protest march at the San Ysidro border crossing. “We feel that they are very much on the side of the company.”

At a meeting this week in Tijuana, Rocha said, a SEDUE representative told opponents they would have to go to Mexico City to request the environmental and risk assessment studies. But a SEDUE administrator in Mexico City said in a later interview with The Times that the reports will be made public in Tijuana before test operations begin.

“If (testing) has to be postponed, it will be postponed,” said Rene Altamirano, director of the agency’s department of pollution control and prevention. “We know that this case means many important things for our country, and it would be stupid to take such a first step in the wrong direction.”

As activists turn up the heat, Chemical Waste Management has counterattacked with full-page ads in Tijuana newspapers touting its state-of-the-art technology and safety procedures.

“We are not going to do anything here that isn’t a 100% safe and doesn’t meet with the guidelines,” Chemical Waste Management vice president Raul Deju said.

Both sides are aware of the high-stakes. Mexico produces 15,000 tons of dangerous chemical waste a day and urgently needs disposal alternatives, Altamirano said. The prospect of a proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, expected to create new industry in Mexico, means the conflict between industrial development and environmental concerns will only intensify.

Ecologists say approval of the incinerator would advance a disturbing trend: displacement of high-risk, high-polluting industries from the United States to Mexico, particularly in border areas where maquiladoras, labor-intensive factories supplying foreign manufacturers, are a major health concern.

The number of toxic waste incinerators in the United States has declined 40% during the past 10 years because of tougher environmental laws and organized public opposition; companies see Mexico as a more exploitable market, activists say. There now are 18 commercial waste incinerators in the United States.

“This is a test to see what can happen with so many other industries that could be installed with the free trade agreement,” said Laura Durazo of AIRESANO, a Mexican environmental education coalition. “The free trade agreement is partly a response to the difficulty that American industry has had in establishing itself in its home country and meeting ecological standards.”

Chemical Waste Management is the hazardous waste unit of Waste Management Inc., one one of the world’s largest disposal firms, which runs incinerators, landfills and other toxic disposal services around the globe.

Waste Management has been the target of criticism by activists and of fines and citations by the U.S. government for price-fixing and environmental violations. Most recently, an Illinois environmental agency levied a $3.1-million penalty against Chemical Waste Management in December, after investigating an explosion at an incinerator and other major safety defects.

Addressing concerns about that record, Deju said: “Unfortunately, we have had fines in the past. We work very hard to correct that. We strive for zero defects.”

A larger commercial incinerator the company proposed in Kettleman City, a town in California’s Central Valley, was blocked when residents sued Kings County officials.

But state and federal EPA officials have a fundamental disagreement with Greenpeace and other groups that claim waste incinerator emissions pose risks of cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

“If it’s done right, if it’s properly reviewed and permitted, it’s an option to consider,” said Larry Bowerman, an EPA expert on hazardous waste disposal technology, who said some of the fears are unfounded. “It destroys all of the waste. It’s preferable to land disposal. Landfills are long-term storage, and there is the danger of a leak or air emissions.”

State EPA officials speak well of the Tijuana facility, which Bowerman said is designed to burn 7,000 tons of liquid waste a year, including metal solvents and PCBs, a suspected carcinogen and pervasive pollutant. In comparison, the proposed Kettleman City incinerator would have had a 100,000-ton capacity, he said.

“From what I have heard, every effort has been made to ensure against allegations or suggestions that the operators have put up a schlock operation, just because they could in Mexico,” said Bob Borzelleri, a spokesman for the state agency.

Despite the plant’s proximity to the border, U.S. environmental agencies have had limited input.

The federal EPA had no role in reviewing selection of the site near Playas de Tijuana when the company began constructing the incinerator four years ago on property it already owned, said Colleen Smith of the EPA’s hazardous waste management division. There was scant public notice in Tijuana until it was too late to challenge construction, opponents say, so they mobilized to prevent the incinerator from operating.

SEDUE and Chemical Waste Management are committed to holding the incinerator to U.S. environmental standards. The EPA has played a technical support role and will closely review the test-burn process to determine the potential environmental impacts on both sides of the border, officials said.

“We did impress upon SEDUE that we need to be on our own timeline for the review,” Smith said. “It will not be a cursory review. . . . We need to meet with SEDUE to discuss what our future role is going to be.”

The incinerator’s location near the Playas neighborhood, which has about 50,000 residents, and near several humble colonias in the surrounding hills, is the prime fear of opponents such as Roberto Sanchez, a researcher in urban planning and environment at the College of the Northern Border. Tijuana’s traffic congestion and unevenly developed road infrastructure magnify the likelihood of a transportation-related toxic accident, he said.

Altamirano, the SEDUE administrator in Mexico City, responded: “The urban location, without a doubt, represents a potential risk. But I also think that there are technologies which will help us minimize those risks.”

Another dispute concerns what opponents call SEDUE’s lack of cooperation on issues such as the environmental impact review, which in California would be made public before construction could even begin.

Mexican federal law requires that information on environmental matters be provided upon request, according to Altamirano; he feels that the law should be modified to make public review a required part of the process. He attributed the delay in releasing the information to SEDUE’s prodigious workload and limited staff resources.

The free trade pact negotiations have helped propel Mexico into action on many environmental matters, including efforts to increase SEDUE’s size and funding for border matters. SEDUE officials say they will not permit the incinerator to function unless it is deemed safe, and some observers say political pressure on the agency is mounting.

Nonetheless, if SEDUE grants approval after the testing period, San Diego activist Diane Takvorian is one of several critics who question the agency’s ability to monitor a complex operation that she says could severely increase pollution in the air basin shared by San Diego and Tijuana.

“SEDUE doesn’t have the resources to even begin to enforce the law related to this,” she said. “We are simply taking the company’s word for it. The inspector has to be considerably more sophisticated than the operator, and SEDUE is just beginning to develop its expertise.”

SEDUE and the company are adamant on one point: they say that persistent accusations that the incinerator will become a receptacle for U.S. generated-waste are groundless. The incinerator has been created expressly to dispose of PCBs and other toxic wastes generated by the maquiladora industry in Mexico.

“We are not the problem,” Deju said. “We are the solution to the problem.”