Toxic Waste Incinerator Plan Defeated : Tijuana: Mexican government revokes permit for plant that would have been 5 miles from border. Protests on both sides of border influenced decision.

Mexico’s environmental secretary Thursday revoked the operating permit of that nation’s first toxic waste incinerator, a Tijuana facility 5 miles from the U.S. border that had been scheduled to begin operation this summer.

The abrupt announcement by Mexico’s equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency, SEDUE (Secretariat for Urban Development and Ecology), came as governors of U.S. and Mexican border states began talks in San Diego about the region’s environmental problems.

The action responded to continuing protests by activists on both sides of the border who opposed the plan by Illinois-based Chemical Waste Management to incinerate hazardous wastes at a coastal recycling plant near densely populated Tijuana neighborhoods.

In recent weeks, activists held protest marches at the San Diego-Tijuana border crossing and criticized SEDUE for failing to make public basic environmental data on the facility, a few miles south of the Playas de Tijuana area.

The decision to revoke the permit was described by participants in the governors conference as a dramatic get-tough move provoked by fears that the border is becoming a toxic dumping ground.

As high-polluting industries relocate from the U.S. to northern Mexico, environmentalists in both the United States and Mexico say pollution related to trans-border industry will increase with passage of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, which tops the conference agenda.

At a press conference in Tijuana en route to the San Diego conference, SEDUE Secretary Patricio Chirinos announced the revocation of the permit granted four years ago to Chemical Waste Management.

“The project has created great concerns not only in Tijuana, but in San Diego as well,” Chirinos said in a prepared statement that also conveyed the greetings of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

A recently approved binational plan to clean up the border, Chirinos said, “requires us to act with maximum responsibility, in order to protect the health of our population and avoid that which could affect communities on the other side of the border.”

The well-organized campaign by residents of Playas de Tijuana and environmental groups in Mexico and California sprang up after Chemical Waste Management contracted in 1988 with the government to burn PCBs and other toxic wastes in conjunction with a Mexican partnership.

Opponents feared a toxic accident caused by an earthquake, transportation error or operating mishap could be catastrophic because of the plant’s proximity to densely populated areas. They also predicted long-term health risks from incinerator emissions in the San Diego-Tijuana air basin.

Both U.S. and Mexican environmental officials, however, have said they believed the facility was safe and that toxic incineration is both safe and necessary.

SEDUE decided to reverse its support of the plan because the population has grown rapidly in the hillside neighborhoods within 20 kilometers of the incinerator in the past five years, a rate of 4.7% each year, Chirinos said. The company’s environmental impact plan did not reflect this “new urban reality,” he said.

One of the driving forces in the opposition campaign was a group called Housewives of Playas de Tijuana led by Marta Rocha, a housewife and community organizer. Besieged by reporters outside a meeting of the governors on environmental issues, Rocha was triumphant.

“They said we were just housewives, we were ignorant, we just knew how to cook,” she said of Mexican environmental officials. “But the reasons they gave today were the things we have been saying all along.”

Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel has maintained a low profile on the issue, except for his assertion that the incinerator should handle only Mexican-produced wastes. On Thursday afternoon he told reporters that the Tijuana decision was positive and reflected one of the central concerns discussed by the governors.

“The worries of the neighbors were clear,” he said. “There is an international preoccupation with toxic dumping at the border.”

Although some environmentalists oppose incineration anywhere, Ruffo said the facility is needed to dispose of a great quantity of toxic waste generated by Baja California’s maquiladora (twin plant) industry. He said he believes SEDUE will allow the company to relocate the incinerator and will have his support in that process.

Meanwhile, Chemical Waste Management spokesman Joseph Pokorny said SEDUE’s move took the company by surprise.

“We are very surprised,” he said. “We do not know what this means. We are going to study this carefully.”

Chemical Waste Management is the hazardous waste disposal unit of Waste Management Inc., a giant multinational disposal firm that has been hit with environmental citations and criminal prosecutions in the U.S.