Lead contamination in Mexico, quagmire of the North American Free Trade Agreement

Website design By BotEap.comA groundwater column with high concentrations of lead in the Mexican border city of Tijuana has contaminated the drinking water of an entire residential community called Colonia Chilpancingo. The plume, as it continues its underground movements, will no doubt threaten more Mexican citizens unfortunate enough to find themselves living above its path. The owner of the lead smelter/battery recovery site that produced the contamination pleaded guilty to two of 26 felony charges, was fined tens of thousands of dollars, and closed his operation. Despite all of this, lead waste, estimated to fill two football fields waist high, remains at the site and continues to seep into the groundwater system.

Website design By BotEap.comInterestingly, the owner is free from legal action that would force him to take responsibility for the environmental damage he has caused. This situation has developed because the owner of the site is an American who lives 20 miles across the US border in an upscale neighborhood of San Diego. The Mexican government simply does not have the power to submit it to the process of law.

Website design By BotEap.comIn 1972, José Kahn, a Chilean who became a US citizen in 1971, opened a lead smelting operation called Metales & Derivados in Tijuana, Mexico. Mr. Kahn processed old US car and boat batteries and sent the dross, or lead-containing waste, to Europe for further processing. Environmental laws in the 1980s made it financially unfeasible to continue shipping the slag to Europe, so Kahn began dumping the waste on his Tijuana property. In 1987 and again in 1989, the Mexican government ordered Mr. Kahn to begin cleanup of the Metales & Derivados site. He never complied. In 1994, environmental officials shut down their operation. Unfortunately, no one, including the government of Mexico, had the money to start such a massive cleanup effort, so the debris was left in place. In 1995, after the Mexican government convicted Mr. Kahn of environmental crimes, he creatively solved his problems by moving to San Diego to become a fugitive, where he remains untouched by the Mexican authorities.

Website design By BotEap.comToday, the case of Mr. Kahn’s lead-contaminated property is in the hands of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the agreement that eliminated import tariffs on goods traded between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In 1998, the citizens of Tijuana and San Diego took the case before the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the environmental watchdog group for NAFTA. The commission issued its report on Metales & Derivados, but the report has not yet been made public and may never be published. Lead debris at the site remains to this day, threatening nearby communities where significant numbers of children live.

Website design By BotEap.comBoth Mexican and American citizens are waiting to see if the freedom created by NAFTA will have enough oversight and legal authority to safeguard the Mexican people from the onslaught of environmentally vagabond businesses like Metales & Derivados. Washington politicians promised that this protection would go hand in hand with the approval of the free trade agreement: the citizens of both countries wait to see if Washington follows through on these promises.