Activists Unite to Oppose New Incinerator : Environment: Company and U.S. agencies say Mexico’s facility for burning toxic wastes is safe. But opponents on both sides of the border call it a potential catastrophe.

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

The high-tech facility is only five miles from the San Diego-Tijuana border and four 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 at all costs.

The campaign has spread north, across the border. Opponents charge that the incinerator’s location near a densely populated urban expanse could lead to a toxic catastrophe caused by an earthquake, transportation mishap or operating error. They also fear long-term health risks of emissions from the plant run 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 safe, and describe the Tijuana facility as a small operation developed with the highest possible review standards to burn Mexico’s toxic wastes.

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

“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 two weekends ago led hundreds of protesters in a march at the San Ysidro border crossing. “We feel that they are very much on the side of the company.”

At a meeting last week in Tijuana, Rocha said, a SEDUE representative told opponents they will have to go to Mexico City to request the environmental and risk-assessment studies. But a SEDUE administrator in Mexico City pledged in a subsequent 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 100% safe and doesn’t meet with the guidelines,” said Chemical Waste Management Vice President Raul Deju.

Both sides are aware that the stakes are high. Mexico produces 15,000 tons of dangerous chemical waste a day and needs disposal alternatives, Altamirano said.

But ecologists say approval of the incinerator could 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 public opposition. There are 18 commercial waste incinerators left in the United States. Companies see Mexico as a more exploitable market, activists say.

Chemical Waste Management is one of the world’s biggest disposal firms, operating incinerators, landfills and other toxic disposal services around the globe.

Along with its parent company, Waste Management Inc., the firm has been the target of criticism by activists, and fines and citations by the U. S. government for price fixing and environmental violations.

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.”

The EPA and state environmental officials discount the worst fears of opponents who maintain that 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. “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 environment officials also 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.

“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 Environmental Affairs Agency.

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

But locating the incinerator near the Playas neighborhood, which has about 50,000 residents, and near several humble colonias in the hills, has sparked uneasiness among its opponents.

San Diego activist Diane Takvorian is one of several critics who question SEDUE’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. “The inspector has to be considerably more sophisticated than the operator, and SEDUE is just beginning to develop its expertise.”