Mark J Spalding News Articles Pages 2000 and 2001

Saving the whales: Baja salt plant killed
Environmental groups triumph over Mitsubishi

The San Diego Union - Tribune; San Diego, Calif.; Mar 3, 2000; Steve La Rue;

Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Mar 3, 2000

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Mitsubishi Corp. announced yesterday that plans for a large salt plant in the San Ignacio Lagoon -- a winter breeding area for the California gray whales -- are being abandoned.

The surprise decision was hailed as a major victory by environmental groups that had opposed the project.

"This is one of the most significant environmental decisions of our generation, not just for Mexico, but for the world," said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of two major U.S. environmental groups that joined with more than 50 Mexican organizations to defeat the proposal.

"This is a world heritage site, a biosphere reserve, a whale sanctuary and a migratory bird refuge. It would have been the worst place on the planet for industrial development," said Reynolds.

The Mexican government and the Japanese conglomerate already jointly operate a company called Exportadora de Sal, S.A. The joint venture, commonly known as ESSA, operates a salt-extraction plant at Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, which is not far from San Ignacio.

Yesterday's announcement means that ESSA will not construct a salt- extraction plant at the pristine lagoon, which forms part of the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve.

Zedillo said in a Mexico City news conference that he decided to stop the plant because of the importance of the Vizcaino Reserve as a whole.

"There are few places in the world like the Vizcaino Reserve," he said. "Taking into account its national and world importance and its singularity, I've made the decision to instruct representatives of the Mexican government to propose a permanent halt to the project."

In a conference call with reporters, James Brumm, executive vice president of Mitsubishi, said his company and Zedillo made the decision to abandon the plans even though a new environmental study produced by 40 scientists, including several Americans, concludes that the salt-extraction process would not have harmed the whales or other species.

"The study shows there would have been no adverse impact on the whales or on the environment," Brumm said.

But he said the corporate giant began to have second thoughts after "a number of responsible people brought to our attention that the project also had to take into account the integrity of the landscape."

He said: "It is better to leave this as an untouched area for eco- tourism."

Mark Spalding, a lecturer in international environmental policy at UCSD, acted as a consultant for environmental groups that opposed the project. He said the decision to abandon the plan was probably forced by the Mexican federal government. "I think Mitsubishi spent a lot of money on an environmental assessment and crafted it to suit their desire to get the project approved," he said. "They are still saying that their environmental assessment justified the project, so I think they probably intended to go ahead with it."

Environmentalists charged that brine spills from holding basins at ESSA's existing salt plant were responsible for the deaths of protected sea turtles and may have figured in a rise in gray whale beachings recorded along the west coasts of the United States and Mexico in recent years.

The population of gray whales has not decreased in recent years, however. After falling to a population low of about 2,000 at the turn of the century, the whale species began to be protected by the U.S government in 1947. The population has since surged to about 26,000 and the gray whales are no longer considered an endangered species.

Mexico's Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1993.

"We're ecstatic," said Jared Blumenfeld, habitat director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which joined the National Resources Defense Council in opposing the project. "We're proud to have protected one of the world's true natural treasures."

Spalding said the environmental coalition that opposed the salt plant might not have won yesterday's victory without the Internet, which allowed it to distribute material in four languages to a worldwide audience. "Five years ago, nonprofit organizations could not have afforded to disseminate the information that we did to counter a strenuous public relations campaign by a multinational corporation," he said. "We have done polling in Mexico and the U.S. and Japan and in the lagoon area and all of the polls were in the 65- to 70-percent range of opposition to the salt works."

Homero Aridjis, a poet, novelist and president of the environmental Group of 100 in Mexico, said, "There is cause to celebrate because it has been . . . the most intensive environmental fight there has ever been in Mexico."

Houston Chronicle/March 3, 2000

"Development Near Whale Breeding Site Canceled"
By Dudley Atlhaus

MEXICO CITY -- Facing growing public opposition in Mexico and abroad, the Mexican government and its Japanese business partner canceled plans Thursday to build a massive saltworks near pristine breeding waters for the Pacific gray whale.

"We Mexicans are creating a new culture of appreciation, respect and care for the natural resources of our nation," President Ernesto Zedillo said in announcing the cancellation of the project on the shores of Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California. "Each day the consciousness is stronger that the protection and sustainable use of our natural resources are fundamental for the present and future development of Mexico."

Mexican and U.S. environmentalists who waged a five-year struggle to stop the proposed saltworks were jubilant when they learned that the project had been scuttled. They had argued that the plan threatened the gray whale and other plant and animal life for the sake of corporate profit.

"This is a victory of an animal species over the market," said Homero Aridjes, the Mexico City poet and environmentalist who helped spark the opposition to the saltworks.

But officials with Mitsubishi, which with the Mexican government owned the company that would have operated the saltworks, said a 3,000-page environmental impact statement concluded that the project would not harm the whales.

Although the Pacific gray whale was listed as an endangered species until 1994, its population has recovered significantly in recent decades.

Laguna San Ignacio is one of four shallow bays along the Pacific Coast of Baja California that serve as breeding and birthing sites for the whales. Each year they migrate 6,000 miles from their summer waters off Alaska and the Arctic coast of Canada to spend the winter along Mexico's shore.

The jointly owned company, called ESSA, has been producing salt through evaporation of sea water since 1957 on land surrounding the whales' breeding waters near the town of Guerrero Negro, 85 miles north of San Ignacio. Company officials and whale experts have pointed out that the number of gray whales visiting the Guerrero Negro lagoons has increased dramatically in those same years.

Zedillo said Thursday that although the gray whales were not threatened by the proposed saltworks, his government was shelving the project because it would have harmed the area near the lagoon, which is inside Mexico's largest biosphere reserve.

"It is a site, until now, with minimal intervention of mankind," Zedillo said of the biosphere that encompasses the lagoon, "of which few remain in the world."

Mitsubishi director James Brumm said at a press conference here Thursday that the company and Mexican government officials determined that the proposed saltworks would have made "a significant alteration of the landscape."

But Brumm suggested that the strong public opposition to the saltworks in Mexico and other countries played a major role in the decision.

Brumm said Mitsubishi received about 700,000 postcards, letters and e-mail messages in opposition to the plan, mainly from the United States.

"It was a lot of public pressure, and we certainly felt the brunt of that," Brumm said. "We have certainly not convinced the general public that this should go ahead."

Two U.S. environmental groups, the National Resources Defense Council and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, largely bankrolled the 50-group coalition that led the opposition to the saltworks.

Those organizations and others launched a far-flung public relations campaign against the project.

Internet sites and e-mail messages told of the threat to the gray whales. Journalists were taken on tours of Laguna San Ignacio. Hollywood stars and other U.S. celebrities made well publicized trips to the site to speak out against the project. Billboards featuring gray whales sprung up across Mexico City.

"We played the global card as well as any multinational corporation," said Mark Spalding, a San Diego environmental lawyer and university professor who advised the two U.S. environmental groups. "It gives me a little faith in democracy and the voice of millions of people."

"Maybe, just maybe, you can win some of these sometimes," Spalding said.

That feeling was echoed by leading Mexican opponents to the project. The saltworks' cancellation represented the first significant victory for Mexican ecologists who had been trying to lessen the effects of the country's rapid industrial and population growth.

"We put all our hope on the fact that things can be different in this country," said Alberto Szekely, a Mexico City lawyer whose firm represents the environmentalists. "We're extremely relieved." <

"That should mean something," says Mark Spalding, a professor of international environmental law in San Diego who is advising the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the National Resources Defense Council, the two U.S. organizations that are largely bankrolling the opposition to the saltworks.

"Does that just go away because someone wants to invest and create a few hundred jobs? The big picture here is environmental policy," Spalding says. "Even if the saltworks by itself had no impact directly, we still have to answer the question of what are the indirect impacts."

Spalding and other environmentalists liken the current effort to stop the saltworks at San Ignacio to the binational opposition against the planned nuclear waste disposal site at Sierra Blanca, in the borderlands of West Texas. The dump proposal was scrapped last year after bitter debate.

Although environmentalists seek to protect dozens of animal and plant species by halting the saltworks, the whale is their most formidable weapon.

"The gray whale is the animal superstar of Mexico," says Serge Dedina, a University of Arizona geographer who published a book this year on San Ignacio. "There is no other animal that has generated as much support."

ESSA has a facility near the village of Guerrero Negro, about 85 miles north of San Ignacio, where it produces salt by pumping sea water into large and very shallow holding tanks in the table-flat desert.

As the sea water evaporates in the desert sun and wind, the increasingly saline residue is pumped into ever shallower ponds until, finally, a thick crust of salt and a solution of brine remains. The salt is collected by large machines akin to road graders, cleaned and loaded on vessels for export.

Although it accounts for only 4 percent of world salt production, the Guerrero Negro facility is the largest saltworks in the world. About 80 percent of the 7 million tons of salt that ESSA produces annually at Guerrero Negro is exported, much of it to Japan. The salt, which is mostly used in industry, generates about $80 million in revenues each year for ESSA.

Because ocean-going freighters cannot dock in the shallow waters at Guerrero Negro, the salt produced there has to first be sent by barge to a nearby island for loading on the vessels.

Once fully operational in 10 to 20 years, the San Ignacio facility would produce about the same amount of salt as Guerrero Negro does now, company officials say.

They say the San Ignacio works would dramatically lower costs because ocean-going ships could load at a nearby pier.

While such salt production is a largely natural process, environmentalists say the noise of the extraction pumps and the brine residue that is returned to the sea have a detrimental impact on the whales and other sea life. They blame brine contamination for the deaths last year of endangered sea turtles near Guerrero Negro.

Company officials point out that nothing grows on the salt flats near the lagoon now and say that the evaporation ponds in Guerrero Negro attract waves of wading birds and other wildlife.

To reduce noise levels, ESSA proposes to use electric pumps at San Ignacio instead of the diesel pumps employed at Guerrero Negro. The salt produced at the new facility would be loaded onto ships from a milelong pier near the village of Punta Abreojos, which is outside the lagoon.

But environmentalist say the saltworks' evaporation ponds could alter the flow of rainwater runoff into the bay. And local fishermen fear that pumping large quantities of water from the lagoon would alter its ecosystem. They also complain that the pier would be built atop prime lobster and abalone fishing beds.

Both the company and the environmentalists have produced conflicting studies on the project's impact, with prominent scientists from the Scripps Institute in San Diego hired by the company concluding that the operation would pose no threat to the whales.

The growing whale population in the lagoons surrounding Guerrero Negro, where salt has been produced since the late 1950s, would seem to bolster that argument.

"I have never seen a whale harmed by the saltworks," says Juan Lopez, who works as a whale-watching guide at Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, which is surrounded by the Guerrero Negro saltworks. "If the salt affects them, then why are they coming here more than any other place?"

Local opponents of the San Ignacio project say that the fate of the whales, although used to rally public support in Mexico and abroad, is not the only issue.

"Maybe the whales won't be so affected by the saltworks," says Manuel Gardea, a university-trained fisheries expert who is a member of a cooperative that fishes the San Ignacio lagoon and runs a tourist camp during whale-watching season. "But (the saltworks) will change the atmosphere here completely."

To remind them of what they fear most, environmentalists and San Ignacio Lagoon residents look to Guerrero Negro.

Raw and ugly, the town looks like mining communities the world over. A single paved street connects ESSA's offices and houses to the main highway, which cuts north through the desert to the U.S. border at Tijuana. Since salt production began here 43 years ago, Guerrero Negro's population has burgeoned from a few hundred souls to more than 13,000 people.

Many of the ESSA employees and their families live in small houses arranged in neat blocks near the headquarters offices. A company store sits across from the main gate of the saltworks.

But the rest of the population lives in thrown-together houses that line the town's dusty and rubble-strewn side streets. Small groceries, cheap hotels, seedy bars and other businesses crowd the main street.

Workers from the saltworks, their clothes worn and their faces lined by the desert sun, share the sidewalks with eco-tourists and U.S. senior citizens who arrive in recreational vehicles.

Like most Baja California communities, Guerrero Negro announces itself miles outside town by the litter that lines the highway. Scattered by the desert winds, plastic bags hang in the cactuses, brush and low trees. Paper, soda cans and plastic bottles pepper the roadsides.

In contrast, Punta Abreojos, where the San Ignacio saltworks would be headquartered, is a sleepy village of humble houses and stores that hasn't changed much since its founding 52 years ago. The town hugs a small cape at the end of a 65-mile-long unpaved road, whose rocks and ruts challenge even the sturdiest vehicles.

Most of Punta Abreojos' 1,000 residents belong to a handful of extended families. People don't lock their doors. The town's fishermen leave all their tackle, including expensive radio gear, in their boats overnight with little concern about thievery.

"There will be more money, but also more crime and more vice," says Marcos Parra, the beefy 44-year-old owner of a small general store across the street from the beach where the village fishing boats are docked. "Everything will change here. That's what progress brings."

To persuade local residents to support the San Ignacio saltworks, ESSA has promised to improve the village's quality of life by spending large sums on local schools, roads and other public works. Company executives claim that more than 200 jobs, many of them going to locals, would be created.

Steady jobs and better schools prove a sore temptation to some who live along the shores of the San Ignacio Lagoon.

"A lot of people here want the project," says Gloria Rousseau, who owns a small general store on one of Punta Abreojo's two main streets. "People are going to benefit. There will be a lot of work. People here don't care so much about the whales, because they don't make money off of them."

But leaders of the Punta Abreojos fishing cooperative complain that the economic advantage of the saltworks for the village will be more than offset by the potential damage to the local fishing areas.

"What good are all of those things if we don't have the products that our families have lived off of for 50 years?" asks Jorge Solorio, 41, the cooperative's president, of ESSA's promises of plenty.

"We see the whole thing as very risky," Solorio says. "We know it is going to affect us."

For now, the fishermen at Punta Abreojos and those all along the shore of the San Ignacio Lagoon see the environmentalists as their best hope for stopping the project. But their alliance with outsiders, especially U.S. groups, makes them increasingly uneasy.

"We aren't foolish. We know that they are using us as a banner," says Manuel Gardea, the fisheries expert.

"But we have a common final objective. We all don't want this project. But for us, the final objectives is that the resources be exploited properly."

USA TODAY/ January 18, 2000

"In Mexico, Conflict Boils Over Salt and Sea Life"
By Valerie Alvord, Special for USA TODAY

PUNTA ABREOJOS, Mexico -- For as long as California gray whales have migrated from Alaska to Mexico, they have come to the placid lagoon near this fishing village, skirted by salt flats, to mate and bear their young. And as far back as recorded history, humans have mined and traded salt.

These two ancient traditions are colliding in this remote region about 500 miles down the Baja California peninsula, at San Ignacio lagoon.

Environmentalists are accusing a company owned jointly by the Mexican government and Mitsubishi Corp. of sacrificing the delicate ecosystem of the lagoon for salt, a commodity needed in huge quantities for industrial uses.

The company, Exportadora de Sal, S.A. (ESSA), wants to pull water from the saltwater lagoon and flood San Ignacio's barren flats, turning them into evaporation ponds where salt would gradually crystallize. Armed with studies showing that the operation won't hurt the 26,000 California gray whales, ESSA contends the 116-mile network of ponds would actually enhance the environment, transforming the sterile desert into fertile wetlands for migrating birds.

''The lagoon has great value for whales, and that value won't change,'' says Joaquin J. Ardura, administrative vice president of ESSA. ESSA's studies, conducted by scientists from such respected research organizations as Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., have netted few converts.

U.S. and Mexican environmental groups are demanding that the Mexican agency responsible for issuing the permit turn down the project.

There's no guarantee that gray whales, once almost extinct, would continue to use the lagoon, says Mark Spalding, who is spearheading opposition for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The proposal, he says, sets a ''bad precedent,'' and would encourage future development in an ecosystem considered so environmentally important that Mexico previously designated it a bird sanctuary, a biosphere reserve and a U.N. World Heritage site.

''For someone to tell me that this is going to be good for the environment is ridiculous,'' says Sara Wan, chairwoman of the California Coastal Commission, which last week joined about a dozen California cities in urging the Mexican government to deny a permit for the plan. ''Birds will land on any puddle on a golf course. That doesn't make it a good replacement for what's natural. Putting this project in San Ignacio lagoon would be like building an industrial plant in Yosemite Valley.''

Migration patterns

The California gray whales, here called Mexican gray whales, migrate about 6,000 miles from the Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska in late summer and spend the winter on the coast of Baja. During the summer, the whales feed on amphipods on the ocean's floor. Then they stop eating and begin their trek past Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, heading to four Mexican lagoons -- Ojo de Liebre, Guerrero Negro, San Ignacio and Magdalena Bay. There they mate, then return to Alaska. The next winter, they come back to the lagoons to bear their young.

Here in San Ignacio, males swim in circles along the mouth of the lagoon, while females move farther back, into the calm estuary interiors, to give birth and train the calves for the arduous journey north.

Conservation groups in Mexico and the United States have launched an anti-Mitsubishi campaign under the dual slogans, ''Save the Baja Whales'' and ''Don't Buy It.'' They are urging a boycott of all Mitsubishi products and services.

Hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them from schoolchildren, have flooded Mitsubishi headquarters in New York and Japan. And 14 mutual funds have agreed not to invest in any arm of Mitsubishi.

Frustrated corporate officials contend the program is hurting companies like Mitsubishi Motors that carry the Mitsubishi name but have no formal ties to Mitsubishi Corp., a 49% owner of ESSA. And they insist their plans will have no impact on whales.

''It's flat-out dishonest,'' Tracy Austin, spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Corp, says of the campaign. ''This project will not hurt whales, and the environmentalists know it.''

Both sides agree the project would generate 200 jobs and jump-start the rural economy near San Ignacio lagoon with paved roads and other infrastructure. But fishermen in Punta Abreojos, the closest village, have weighed in against ESSA, voting unanimously to oppose the saltworks.

''No matter what the company says, I won't believe them,'' asserts Isidro Arce, 36, manager of the 800-member fishing cooperative at Punta Abreojos. He points to the village school and the water desalination plant as proof that the town of about 1,200 is doing fine without ESSA.

Fishing and whale watching are the only industries here. The fishermen know where to find whales, which begin arriving in December and leave in May.

On a recent day, signature whale spouts could be seen every 30 or 40 seconds across the lagoon. The sprays hung in the air, then burst into rainbow prisms as they fell apart in the sun. White-marked fins flipped in the air every two or three minutes, and whales rolled in the water and popped up their gray and white heads.

Jorge Solorio Espinoza, 36, a fisherman, says he doesn't want to co-exist with a salt plant.

''Many people will come here, and the mentality will change,'' he contends. ''There will be more people and more workers, and the people will fish. The company will take sea water and then return the brine to the sea. The water will be contaminated, and the fish will die.''

Statements like these frustrate Juan Bremmer, director general of ESSA, who oversees the company's existing salt-harvesting operation at the Ojo de Liebre lagoon near the town of Guerrero Negro, about 100 miles north of San Ignacio.

Guerrero Negro produces 20,000 tons of salt a day, or 7.5 million tons a year, just what the company hopes to produce at San Ignacio. It brings in $80 million in gross revenue and generates 1,000 jobs -- all at no cost to the environment, Bremmer says. The town has half a dozen schools, a junior college, a hospital, soccer fields, a tennis court and several churches. Ninety percent of the town's approximately 12,000 residents have chlorinated water, and their bathrooms are hooked up to sewers.

'Salt is good for Guerrero Negro,'' Bremmer says. ''And Guerrero Negro is good for the environment,'' he insists, pointing out osprey and peregrine falcons nesting on poles installed by ESSA to keep the birds high above the jaws of hungry coyotes.

Impact studies

Other studies show that despite the noise of diesel engines and the obstruction of barges crisscrossing the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, gray whales have continued to migrate there in record numbers. According to ESSA, statistics show whales are actually choosing Ojo de Liebre -- where salt is produced -- over the pristine San Ignacio lagoon.

Environmentalists dispute the company's interpretation of the statistics.

ESSA has commissioned these studies for an environmental impact assessment that is expected to be released as soon as this month and will form the basis for the company's permit application. Among the findings, the company says, are that taking water from San Ignacio lagoon will not decrease the salinity or the temperature of the water and that leftover brine won't contaminate the sea if it's diluted before it's discharged.

San Ignacio is the perfect spot for a salt-harvesting operation, Bremmer says. ''You can't do anything else with (the land),'' he says.

Conditions for crystallizing salt are rare in nature. Salt flats, sea water and warm perennial winds are needed in close proximity. At San Ignacio, the conditions are more than ideal, they are perfect -- even better than at Guerrero Negro where the wind blows cold off the ocean. At San Ignacio, the wind warms over desert before hitting the lagoon. Warmth speeds evaporation.

There are many in the area who see the economic implications. ''We need sustainable development as a legacy for our children,'' says Maria del Carmen Trujillo, a travel agent who belongs to a citizens group that favors the project.

Brought in to evaluate the program, U.N. investigators called the San Ignacio lagoon an area of ''superlative natural features of exceptional beauty.'' By contrast, they call Guerrero Negro an ''urban development,'' resulting ''from the presence of the saltworks.''

Though acknowledging that evaporation ponds at Guerrero Negro provide important habitat for birds and that whales have continued to thrive, the report also sounds warnings. The proposed saltworks, it says, ''would imply the transformation'' of the unique and beautiful landscape surrounding San Ignacio lagoon.

Associated Press Newswires/January 10, 2000

"Mexico salt factory opposed by California Coastal Commission"

Environmentalists claim a plan to build a salt factory in a Pacific gray whale breeding and birthing lagoon in Mexico will endanger the animals. The company says it's safe and critics should wait for results of a two-year study before taking a stand.