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Environment's a nonpartisan issue Compass By Mark J. Spalding (Published: December 11, 2002) During the 2002 election, many of Alaska's Republican candidates spoke of environmentalists as limiting Alaska's future. They campaigned against unnamed environmental extremists and labeled some environmental moderates as enemies of the state. While this may be consistent with the current Republican trend, past Republican leaders have played vital roles in the American conservation movement and in developing U.S. environmental policy. In other words, these labels would just as easily apply to Republicans, at least historically. Abraham Lincoln was the first to take unprecedented efforts to protect America's environment by setting aside Yosemite Valley in 1864 through a public trust grant to California. In the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt established numerous national parks, national wildlife refuges, national forests and national monuments. These actions became one of Roosevelt's most prominent legacies. Even as recently as the Nixon administration, Congress passed significant pieces of pro-environment legislation that were signed into law by the Republican president, including the National Environmental Policy Act (which created the Environmental Protection Agency), the Ocean Dumping Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and a Safe Drinking Water Act. President Nixon recognized the political capital of being green. Society was becoming increasingly more concerned with pollution, and he reacted accordingly. In 1971, Nixon wrote a 37-point plan to clean up the environment. His plan called for pollution controls by introducing several programs to regulate and implement laws using taxes and strict enforcement of standards. As the Christian Right began to dominate the Republican Party in the 1980s, President Reagan began attacking environmental organizations for raising nature above humanity -- activities that were considered un-American, antihuman, anti-Christian and directly against biblical teachings (ignoring that the Bible calls for us to be stewards of God's creation). With support from big business and property-rights advocates, President Reagan dismantled many existing regulations. Almost single-handedly, Reagan succeeded in making the environment a partisan issue. Since January 2001, the Bush administration has continued this tradition by trying to reverse, de-fund or intentionally fail to enforce laws related to our most important environmental issues: clean water, clean air and toxic chemicals. Ironically, even the Nixon-era National Environmental Policy Act, the mother of all modern environmental laws, is being attacked. In the past, the Republican Party was on the right track. But the conservationist themes within the GOP of only 30 years ago are now forgotten. Today, what are conservatives conserving? Conservatives should use this opportunity to return to their historic roots and "conserve" our natural resources for use by future generations, rather than serve the interests of corporate contributors. Because of rollbacks to environmental legislation, taxpayers are increasingly saddled with the bill for health care costs that result from environmental degradation. Shouldn't environmentalists and Republican conservatives stand together for American citizens to fight against subsidies for corporations that exploit our natural resources and pollute our air and water? Conservatism and environmentalism need not be in conflict. Unfortunately, few Republicans today are interested in discussing the consistency between conservatism and conservation, the constitutional obligation of government to protect its citizens, or our common-sense desire for a healthy environment. On this issue there ought to be nonpartisan consensus.Mark J. Spalding is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who regularly visits Alaska. He can be contacted at mspalding@ucsd.edu. He left the Republican Party after the moral majority controlled it; he then left the Democratic Party when Clinton/Gore failed to fulfill their environmental promise. He sits today as a member of the Green Party, thinking: "Ralph was wrong, there was a difference between Al Gore and George Bush." Copyright © 2002 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com) Each click will take you to the next quote in chronological order from most recent to earliest for articles in 2002. The Times-Picayune WASHINGTON August 16, 2002 Fight brews over
environmental law -- As the Bush administration considers exempting most ocean territory from a key environmental law, it's stirring controversy before any final decision is made. Environmental groups are outraged and planning a political counterattack. Federal agencies are re-examining long-standing policies. A senator is demanding an explanation from the White House. Beyond the political maneuvering, the dispute may ultimately have to be decided by the courts because the law's language is ambiguous, legal scholars say, meaning additional uncertainty for any broad policy decisions the administration makes on the issue. The controversy flared last week when representatives from several federal agencies and departments held an unusual meeting with White House officials to discuss how to apply a legal argument the Justice Department is making in a California case. Government lawyers are arguing that unless an individual law requires it, the National Environmental Policy Act does not apply outside U.S. territory -- including outside U.S. waters that extend either 3 or 12 miles from shore, depending on the legal interpretation. They say they have made the argument in past cases. But the White House has never before looked at using it as the basis for a policy. NEPA requires that government agencies examine how their actions affect the environment by mounting a study that culminates in an environmental impact statement. Some agencies, chiefly the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers, do such studies outside U.S. waters for fisheries management plans, marine sanctuaries and activities that affect endangered species. So using the Justice Department's argument as the basis for a governmentwide policy could mean a major change in the government's stewardship of the oceans. Government lawyers argue that a 1979 executive order should apply instead. That would require an environmental study but eliminate public participation requirements of NEPA and the right to sue government agencies for not complying with the law. Reach of the law The debate flows from an ambiguity in the law: NEPA does not explicitly spell out whether it can be applied outside U.S. territory. That leaves the issue open to interpretation, and the courts have disagreed over the law's reach. "The question of whether NEPA applies extraterritorially is very much up in the air," said Daniel Mandelker, a law professor at the University of Washington-St. Louis and author of a book on NEPA. NEPA says that "all agencies of the federal government" should do environmental impact statements on "major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment." Most, but not all, federal actions -- granting pollution permits, for example -- take place within U.S. territory. But as globalization has knocked down barriers to trade and travel, the reach of U.S. public and private activities has extended from what was traditionally defined as U.S. territory. In 1976, the U.S. claimed jurisdiction over fishing extending 200 miles from its shores and, later, a broader "exclusive economic zone" covering the same vast area. Fishing, commerce, drilling, dumping, exploration -- all of which have environmental impact -- have expanded dramatically since then. "Even as private actors extend their reach on a global basis, so does the federal government of the United States, probably more than it ever has," said Bradley C. Karkkainen, a law professor at Columbia University. "We've been a global power for a long time, but improvements in global transportation, communication, the degree of interaction among nations mean a lot of federal activities occur outside the boundaries of the U.S., and the fractional share of those activities is probably growing over time. The question is, what kind of law should apply?" Sparking the debate Because of this expansion, some law experts say the Bush administration may find a strict interpretation of NEPA problematic in a practical sense. "I would suggest that the federal government cannot have it both ways: exclusive economic zone but no responsibilities to match the economic control," said Mark Spalding, an environmental lawyer and lecturer at the University of California, San Diego. In the case that sparked the controversy, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit against the Navy about testing experimental sonar systems that have been linked to the stranding of endangered whales. The plaintiffs argued that NEPA applies and that the Navy should be required to do an environmental impact statement. Navy and Justice Department lawyers cited various precedents in arguing that NEPA should not apply outside U.S. territory, among them two Supreme Court cases that said the government should presume that U.S. laws do not apply abroad unless they explicitly say they do. "There are some other statutes -- the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act -- that explicitly apply not only to the United States but to the high seas," said a Justice Department lawyer working on the case. "NEPA doesn't have anything like that. Nothing in the statute or the legislative history leads you to believe it could be applied outside the U.S." However, the lawyer said that NEPA would probably apply to activities straddling the territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone, as many fish stocks do, for example. Several circuit court decisions have found that NEPA does not apply in foreign territory or the high seas, though the circumstances differ from the Navy's situation and that of many activities taking place off the U.S. shores but not in foreign territory. Court sides with NEPA But the highest court to rule on the issue supports NEPA's application outside U.S. territory. The 1993 U.S. District Court of Appeals found that the law applied to an incinerator built by the National Science Foundation in Antarctica. One of the central arguments in that decision was that NEPA is a law that governs a decision-making process, so the key question is where a decision is made, not the place its effects are felt. Since the decision to put an incinerator in Antarctica was made in the United States, the court said, the law applies. The California court hearing the case is expected to make a ruling perhaps later this month, attorneys say. It is certain to be appealed, both sides say, but could have an impact on the White House actions on the issue. In the meantime, opponents of changing the status quo are organizing. Lawyers for several environmental groups are furiously researching how agencies currently apply NEPA to the oceans, according to Tim Eichenberg, a lawyer and consultant with one of the groups, Oceana. He said the environmentalists plan to fight to prevent any policy change. "We are going to analyze all the statutes that would be affected. We are concerned it would cover a host of activities," Eichenberg said. "One of them is offshore oil and gas. If the government wants to interpret this as narrowly as possible, they could try to not apply NEPA to offshore oil and gas leasing. (The law governing it) requires that plans of development be analyzed under NEPA -- but it doesn't say anything about leasing." Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., meanwhile, is promising to dog the White House on the issue. He has attacked the Bush administration for considering the change and using the legal arguments made by the Navy as the basis for a potentially broad policy decision. "This is a political decision by a highly political administration that they're going to take the things which unite us -- the military, the war on terrorism -- and use them as excuses to make the wrong choices about the environment, pitting the military against the environment to do the bidding of polluters," Kerry said in a statement. "I'm going to fight it, and we'll use the Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries to bring the truth to light." © The Times-Picayune. Used with permission. Copyright 2002 New OrleansNet LLC. All Rights Reserved. Los Angeles Times San Diego, Calif.; May 14, 2002 Uncertain Road for Baja Plan Abstract: The $1.9-billion project calls for marinas and a road to haul boats between coasts. But Baja has a history of shattering dreams. VALLEY OF THE BOOJUMS, Mexico  A boojum tree, center, in the Valley of the Boojums in Baja California. The trees stand in the path of a proposed new road to be built for yachts that want a shortcut across the Baja Peninsula. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) It's the best road in Baja, as far as it goes. It unfurls for two miles and then quits in the middle of the peninsula, a long way from either of the two coasts it is supposed to bridge. Is this, as Mexico's tourism promoters say, a road to the future that will attract hoards of American visitors and launch sleepy, rural Baja California into the 21st century? Or is the road destined to be a dead end here in the boojum forest, one more Baja development scheme as fantastic as these giant trees, which resemble upside-down carrots and got their name from Lewis Carroll's whimsical poem, "The Hunting of the Snark"? The road is a centerpiece of the Mexican government's $1.9-billion project to establish a necklace of marinas around Baja, 20 airports, and dozens of hotels, condos and golf courses.  Construction is underway on the new marina in the tiny Pacific Coast fishing village of Santa Rosalillita, the first of two dozen new or upgraded marinas planned around Baja California. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) Backed by Mexican President Vicente Fox, the project would be the biggest tourist development since Mexico turned the isolated fishing village of Cancun into a strip of high-rise hotels and swim-up bars. The concept behind Escalera Nautica, literally Nautical Ladder, is that yacht owners, mostly from California, could put ashore at any of the two dozen new or improved marinas to be spaced roughly 120 miles apart. The promoters of the project figure the biggest obstacle is the sheer length of the peninsula which, at 820 miles, is longer than Italy. That's where the new road, or "land bridge," comes in. Boat owners would turn over their lovingly waxed and polished yachts and cabin cruisers to a local hauling service, which would load them onto flatbeds and trailer them across the desert through the boojum forest. The idea is that the new belt of blacktop across Baja's midriff would attract thousands of boaters from the Pacific delighted to find a shortcut to the Sea of Cortes and its 900 islands. But Baja has a history of shattering the grand dreams it inspires. The Sea of Cortes already has one largely empty port near Loreto built by the same government tourism agency now proposing to build or upgrade 23 more. Baja's main highway is littered with abandoned recreational vehicle parks, cafeterias and gas stations built a generation ago to attract U.S. tourists. Weeds and rusting hulks of junked cars fill the spots once slated for American RVs. Conservationists worry about history repeating itself with the new string of ports: If Mexico builds it, they won't come. Yacht owners seem less than eager for such an expansion of marinas, fueling questions about whether pristine coastline is being defaced for uncertain gain.  Serge Dedina of the conservation group WildCoast stands at the edge of the road in the middle of the Valley of the Boojums. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) Homero Aridjis, one of Mexico's leading environmentalists, fears that even if it succeeds, the Nautical Ladder will despoil Baja's stark beauty and displace its rare wildlife. At worse, he says, the project will set off an orgy of land speculation, causing outbreaks of "chaotic development" all along the peninsula. Baja owes much of its charm to its stubbornly primitive nature, rooted in makeshift fishing villages, empty wind-swept beaches and isolated desert ranchos. Backward Baja has its aficionados. American and European tourists seem perfectly willing to endure kidney-jarring roads and basic accommodations to fish, surf and kayak in clean, clear waters; to rub the head of baby gray whales in deserted Pacific Coast bays; or just to unfold a beach chair on an empty stretch of sand and do nothing. Now, as crews wrestle giant boulders to build the first new harbor and mow down rare boojum trees to make way for a road, the proposed mega-development is pitting one vision of Baja against another. "We have a wonderful way to dramatically change the way of life in an entire region of Mexico," said John McCarthy, director of FONATUR, Mexico's tourist development agency. According to FONATUR's projections, the new amenities would entice some 76,000 yachts from the United States to make the passage every year, bringing with them 860,000 "nautical" tourists. This surge in tourism would, in turn, create 50,000 direct and 200,000 indirect jobs. Impressed by such figures, President Fox has embraced the project. It's an appealing notion for a head of state who dreams of opening the border with the United States, but knows he must generate enough jobs at least to slow down the northward migration of Mexican workers. Tourism now stands as Mexico's third most important economic enterprise behind manufacturing and oil, and from Mexico City, Baja looks ideal for a new jobs program. Despite urban sprawl in the Tijuana-Ensenada corridor and the enclave of resorts spreading out from Cabo San Lucas at land's end, Baja contains less than 3% of Mexico's population of nearly 100 million. Much of this arid peninsula with 2,000 miles of coastline remains unspoiled--a testament to what bad roads and scant water can do for a place.  Now conservationists on both sides of the border are pushing to preserve Baja much as it is. Two years ago, the fledging Mexican conservation movement--with the help of U.S. environmentalists--halted the construction of an industrial salt plant in southern Baja next to a gray whale nursery in San Ignacio Lagoon. Now these groups are challenging the Nautical Ladder as another ill-conceived mega-project. They fear it will ruin wetlands, beaches, spawning and feeding grounds for birds, fish, whales and sea turtles.  A green sea turtle surfaces for air in a tank at the Sea Turtle Research and Conservation Station in Bahia de los Angeles, a prime feeding and nursery ground for the endangered animals. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) "We learned from San Ignacio we could be the huge rock in the shoe," said Patricia Martinez, administrative director of Pro Estero, a wetlands protection group in Ensenada. The Mexican conservation movement scored a victory earlier this year when it persuaded the government to conduct an environmental study on the Nautical Ladder project and, in particular, the road. Mexico has rigorous environmental laws, which sometimes require more stringent ecological assessments than U.S. law, said Mark J. Spalding of UC San Diego's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. "When it works, it's great. It also is frequently shelved and ignored," Spalding said. That's what happened when the government began to build the new road a year ago, clearing a wide swath through the Valley of the Boojums, or Valle de los Cirios, a nature reserve for the bizarre trees, which are found nowhere else on Earth. The roadwork stopped--leaving the first, two-mile stretch isolated in the wilderness--after conservationists raised Cain. "If you do anything in a protected area, you have to do a study," said Adrian Aguirre, director of the protected valley. "They didn't have the permit to do it." FONATUR'S McCarthy and his staff said every aspect of the project--as well as the concept as a whole--will face rigorous ecological analysis. Meanwhile, construction is underway on the first new marina in the tiny Pacific Coast fishing village of Santa Rosalillita. FONATUR estimates that 140 boats a day will someday use the yet-to-be-built boat ramp to begin the road trip across the desert to Bahia de los Angeles on the Sea of Cortes. New roads, marinas and golf courses also would be carved out of other wildlife reserves: the Upper Gulf Biosphere Reserve, the Loreto Bay National Park, the Sea of Cortes Islands Wildlife Refuge and the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which was instrumental in stopping the saltworks project in San Ignacio Lagoon, is now gearing up to fight a breakwater for a new marina at Punta Abreojos just up the coast from the gray whale nursery. The environmental group Surfrider also has joined the fight, partly because five of the proposed marinas could destroy top surf spots at Santa Rosalillita, Puerto Canoas, Punta Abreojos, Magdalena Bay and Bahia San Juanico, a place surfers all over the globe know as Scorpion Bay. "It could be devastating," said Ruben Andrews, who co-owns a surf camp at Scorpion Bay. Surfing tourism, he points out, is second only to fishing as a source of income for these villages. McCarthy recognizes environmental opposition rising on both sides of the border. But he notes that Mexico is in desperate need of jobs and that tourism treads far more lightly on sensitive land than does agriculture or industrial development. "We agree with them that this is a highly sensitive area of Mexico," McCarthy said. "If we don't do it right, we could destroy what we set out to protect." Many residents are skeptical of environmental and economic promises from Mexico City. Fishermen aren't eager to become servants of the tourist trade. The owners of small businesses worry about being marginalized by a new economy.  Guillermo "Memo" Smith, 54, right, and his son, Guillermo Smith Jr., dig for clams in Bahia de los Angeles. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) In Bahia de los Angeles, for instance, businessman Guillermo Galvan is concerned enough about the proposed 1,800-slip marina that he wrote to President Fox. He urged that the marina be built small and in town to benefit the locals, not displacing them by building a large marina-hotel complex on the outskirts.  A family breaks camp along the shore of Bahia de los Angeles, where the Mexican government plans to build a 1,800-slip marina. (AL SCHABEN / LAT) If the government wants to help the town of 800 people, he wrote, how about building a sewage treatment plant, rather than a golf course or high-rise hotel? "Electricity is on from 7 to 11 p.m. We only have water once a week," Galvan said in an interview. "How the hell can we manage that fancy stuff?" Moreover, town leaders join conservationists in worrying that this project will be built and then abandoned like the last time FONATUR came to central Baja, when it built the RV parks. "The government should know better not to waste money in projects that don't make sense," said Antonio Resendiz, who uses part of an abandoned RV park in Bahia de los Angeles as a sea turtle research station. The toughest sell may be to the people the project is supposed to attract. Experienced Baja sailers already bemoan the tedium involved in checking into a Mexican port--finding the port captain, dealing with immigration, paying fees at a bank and then going back to the port captain so he can check the paperwork. As a result, the goal of many boat owners is to avoid anchoring in any Mexican ports. The idea of putting their boats in the hands of local truck drivers for a trip across the desert would be funny if it weren't horrifying. "Would I put my boat on a Mexican truck to go up and down a mountain to get to the other side? No way," said Nancy Dillman, who just returned to San Diego from two years cruising Baja. Boating experts say FONATUR has completely misread the market in its projections. For 76,000 recreational boats to sail to Baja would mean cleaning out every slip in every harbor from San Diego to Sausalito, said Richard Spindler, executive editor of Latitude 38, a California-based sailing magazine. Most of these boat owners couldn't, or shouldn't, tackle the cold, windy seas that stretch two-thirds of the way down the Pacific side of the peninsula, Spindler said. Boat captains have a nickname for these conditions: The Baja Bash. Moreover, yacht owners worry the proposed development will ruin what now attracts them to the peninsula. "There are so many terrific natural anchorages, nobody needs these marinas," said Spindler, who has made an annual voyage with about 100 other boats to Cabo for the past 21 years. "For selfish reasons, we want Baja pristine," he added. "We don't want hotels. We don't want golf courses. We don't want marinas."
Tijuana, Mexico Two new proposals by international energy companies to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals on the Baja California coastline are drawing opposition from environmentalists and tourism operators who charge the projects will threaten coastal resources. The projects, intended to help quench nearby Southern California's thirst for energy, also are being criticized on grounds they're receiving Mexican government support without having first been presented to local communities. Late last month, Royal Dutch-Shell confirmed that it intends to build a terminal near Ensenada to receive overseas shipments of liquefied natural gas. The $500 million project is set for completion in 2006. A month earlier, Houston-based Marathon Oil Company had unveiled plans to build a $900 million liquefied natural gas complex just south of Tijuana. That brings to four the number of LNG terminal projects slated for Baja California coastal sites ranging from the Playas area of Tijuana to the community of Sauzal, just north of Ensenada. The other two are joint efforts-one by Sempra Energy and CMS Energy Corp., and another by Phillips Petroleum and El Paso Corp. Critics of the energy projects say the companies involved are taking advantage of Mexico's current lack of LNG environmental and safety regulations to use Baja California as a low-cost entryway to the Southern California market. The projects have yet to receive approval from state and federal regulatory authorities in Mexico, and environmental groups appear determined to fight them. "We're worried that Baja California is being offered for sale to anyone who says they favor economic development," says Rodolfo Anguiano, director of the Tijuana-based Gaviotas Ecology Group. The project currently attracting the most attention is Marathon's. The LNG complex, to be located less than 15 miles (24 kms) south of the U.S. border in the middle of one of Mexico's most popular tourist destinations, would be Baja California's largest industrial facility. Marathon's plans call for the construction of a terminal to receive liquid natural gas tankers arriving from Indonesia; onshore LNG re-gasification facilities; pipelines to ship the gas north to the United States; and a 400-megawatt, gas-fired power plant that would serve Southern California. Marathon spokeswoman Susan Richardson says the complex would be operational in 2005; she adds it has the support of Tijuana's mayor and the governor of Baja California. Says Richardson: "We're moving forward, and it's a serious proposal." Liquefied natural gas accounts for 5% of global natural-gas consumption, but demand for it is growing. Natural gas is liquefied through refrigeration and compression to ease its transport. It is then off-loaded and converted back to a gaseous form in re-gasification facilities. Natural gas and electricity from the new Marathon complex will flow north through existing transmission lines, an existing natural-gas line and new gas lines being planned. How tight the oversight? Anguiano and other critics assert there is no assurance new facilities will be adequately overseen. They note that an existing state-owned electrical plant in nearby Rosarito Beach has had a history of breakdowns and environmental violations. Baja California's environmental attorney general, Alejandro Alvarez Cardenas, in January filed felony charges against Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) for improper hazardous-waste storage and ocean discharges of waste from the facility. The Rosarito Beach plant is next door to an LNG facility proposed by El Paso Corp. and Phillips Petroleum. That $400 million facility would receive gas from the Timor Sea by way of a liquefying plant Phillips is building in Darwin, Australia. The joint venture paid $16 million for a 74-acre (30-hectare) coastal plot and is leasing another parcel. University of California San Diego political science lecturer Mark Spalding says the tourist-dependent Baja coast isn't a good place for such facilities. The region generates most of Baja's $700 million per year in tourism income. "All of us are concerned Baja California is going to be the unfair recipient of the pollution, while California gets the energy," says Spalding, who consults for environmental groups. In the past year, however, tourism has slumped as more American vacationers have stayed home in the wake of last September's terrorist attacks. In addition, Baja California's maquiladora industry has lost more than 35,000 jobs. Baja governor Eugenio Elorduy says the region needs to diversity its economy. "This project would serve as a symbol to the global marketplace that Mexico is a good place to conduct business," he said recently. Mexican officials also argue that the new terminals will be regulated properly, pointing out that a congressional committee in Mexico City is now drafting rules for LNG facilities. While environmental and safety impacts loom largest in the debate about the liquefied natural gas projects, questions also have cropped up about public disclosure. Some critics complain that neither the energy companies nor Mexican authorities have adequately informed local residents about the energy projects. "What are the potential risks and consequences for the region?" asks Roberto Valdes, president of Bajamar Real Estate Services, a 350-home coastal resort development south of Rosarito Beach. "This is something we are just finding out." For their part, local officials are gauging the potential consequences of the projects. Tijuana Mayor Jesus González Reyes does not anticipate a threat to public safety. But he wants to make sure new gas pipelines do not complicate new-home construction. Tijuana needs 30,000 to 40,000 new homes every year, he points out, and many are being built in the area between downtown Tijuana and the coast-where gas pipelines would run. "I'm not saying I'm against the projects," González says, "but we are just getting information about them now." - Eric Niiler Contacts Rodolfo Anguiano Grupo Ecología Gaviotas Tijuana, Mexico Tel: +(52 664) 680-6925 Eugenio Elorduy Walther Governor of Baja California Mexicali, Mexico Tel: +(52 686) 656-657 Jesus González Reyes Mayor of Tijuana Tijuana, Mexico Tel: +(52 664) 683-4060 Susan Richardson Public Affairs Manager Marathon Oil Houston, Texas, United States Tel: (713) 296-3994 Mark Spalding Lecturer University of California at San Diego San Diego, California, United States Tel: (619) 223-0074 mspalding@ucsd.edu Roberto Valdes Bajamar Real Estate Services Bonita, California, United States Tel: (619) 479-2530 http://www.bajamarproperties.com Edited for spelling Copley News Service/April 15, 2002 "Greenpeace critical of Sempra plans for Mexico" By Diane LindquistThe environmental group Greenpeace is issuing a report today (Monday) that claims Sempra Energy Corp. is carrying out a mega-development plan that will change the border region into a vast "dirty energy export zone." The report, titled Terra Sempra - translated Sempra Land - portrays the San Diego firm as a price-gouging, polluting, unethical corporation bent on dominating the local cross-border energy market. Sempra, it says, is running away from California's stringent air and water standards by building many of its projects in Mexico. The report says Mexico's looser rules allow the company to build projects that will pollute the skies and deplete the water resources of "poor, marginal" U.S. and Mexican border communities. "It's a clear instance of a company in a Northern country exploiting a Southern country for environmental and economic reasons," said J.P. Ross, the report's author. Greenpeace also faults President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox for allowing the "fast and furious development of the border region." Although Sempra's plans in Mexico have generated controversy for months, the Greenpeace report takes the issue to a new level, said Mark Spalding, director of the environmental law and civil society program at UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. "This is one of the highest profile international environmental groups saying something about our region. And that's a pretty big deal," he said. "This takes a local issue and makes it an international issue." Sempra issued a terse statement sharply disagreeing with the Greenpeace report, saying it is "chock full of false allegations, inaccuracies and politically motivated charges." "The report is especially offensive in that it dismisses the sovereignty of Mexico to pursue economic development projects that will help improve the qualify of life of its citizens," Sempra said. "Greenpeace's unsubstantiated allegations fly in the face of both fact and reality." Nearly 20 big energy companies are planning projects in Baja California and elsewhere along the northern Mexico border to sell natural gas and electricity to U.S. and Mexican consumers. The conglomeration of projects "will have terrible impacts all along the border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico," Ross said. Greenpeace focused on Sempra, he said, because the company is developing so many projects in Mexico and the southwestern United States. "Greenpeace is committed to stopping this plan from becoming reality," says the report, an advance copy of which was obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune. The bilingual document highlights Sempra's plans for a network extending from Ensenada to Mexicali in Baja California and northward throughout Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. The system includes seven new power plants, hundreds of miles of new natural gas pipelines and electrical transmission lines and a liquefied natural gas, or LNG, receiving terminal. In its response, Sempra warned that U.S. and Mexican officials predict serious power shortages if electricity plants aren't built soon. And it noted that the LNG terminal and the cross-border pipeline it's building will supply much-needed natural gas, a relatively clean-burning fuel, to many local power plants, thus reducing pollution. Greenpeace acknowledges that Baja California and California need new energy sources. But it contends energy efficiency and renewable energy projects would fill the need. Bill Powers, a leader of the binational Border Power Plant Working Group, said he hopes the Greenpeace report draws more attention to the projects' consequences. "We have worked within the system," Powers said. "We write comment letters (to U.S. and Mexican federal officials) addressing serious issues. And the response has been, 'Thank you very much,' and nothing happens except the projects keep moving forward." Powers' group and now Greenpeace contend the power plant project Sempra is building in Mexicali will boost harmful emissions in an already-polluted cross-border air basin. They also complain that the facility's cooling system, which will reclaim the city's sewage, will waste a potential water resource and dump harmful high-saline water into the ecologically sensitive New River and the Salton Sea. Sempra insists the Mexicali power plant is being fitted with the same emission controls as the plants it wants to build in California. For example, to build a plant in Escondido, the company is agreeing to institute "offsets," which require reducing other sources of pollution in the area to offset the emissions that even the most modern plant produces. Jorge Escobar, a Baja California environmental official who defended Sempra's Mexicali plant, conceded Mexico's rules are not as stringent as California's. But he said local and state authorities will ask Sempra to agree to institute offsets in Mexicali once the plant is operating. Michael Shames, executive director of San Diego-based Utility Consumers' Action Network and a long-time Sempra critic, said the report depicts Sempra as an unregulated monopoly and raises questions that need to be addressed. "But I have to appreciate there may be some good answers," he said. "Building Mexican power plants might allow us to close some dirty power plants on this side of the border." Also contributing to this story was staff writer Craig D. Rose. Edited for spelling Los Angeles Times San Diego, Calif.; January 2, 2002 Sewage Cleanup Is Focus of Talks Abstract: Border: Officials of both countries hope a novel idea will end decades of dumping untreated Mexican waste into the ocean off the U.S. coast. SAN DIEGO -- For decades, untreated waste has poured from a sieve-like system in Tijuana and flowed downhill through the Tijuana River into the United States, where it eventually dumps into the Pacific Ocean. Officials from the U.S. and Mexico are preparing for talks this month that many hope will solve the problem, which has beset generations of residents along the border. The negotiations center on a novel proposal for piping millions of gallons of sewage back to Mexico for treatment at a privately run plant. The runaway sewage symbolizes the difficulties of curing cross-border ills, even those that everyone acknowledges. Experts and officials point to many factors, including spotty attention to border problems by both governments and rocketing population growth along the frontier that constantly strains thin resources. What are mundane local problems elsewhere become complicated at the border by international diplomacy and an alphabet soup of government agencies in two nations. In the case of Tijuana's sewage, no fewer than a dozen municipal, state and federal agencies have been involved at one time or another. "Whenever you need all the stakeholders involved in a decision, everyone recognizes how hard that is. Any time you stick a border between them, it doubles the number of people who need to be involved," said Rick Van Schoik, managing director of the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy, which monitors border issues. "It boils down to: You just need that many more voices at the table." Over the years, cross-border sewage has been the focus of binational agreements, public hearings, angry rhetoric and lawsuits, one of which was settled in December. There have been signs of progress, including construction on U.S. soil of a joint treatment plant that captures and partly cleans up to 25 million gallons of the overflow waste each day. But there also has been a lot of public tussling over treatment methods. Often, it has seemed only the sewage was moving in a unified direction. The result is that raw and under-treated waste continues to empty into the ocean off Imperial Beach, creating a hazard for surfers and a persistent bother for leaders of the beach city and residents of the Tijuana River Valley nearby. Some border analysts say policy makers erred in spending $400 million to build the plant and its massive ocean pipe on the U.S. side rather than to repair leaks and constructing smaller facilities in Tijuana. "You end up trying to build infrastructure in the U.S. to solve a problem in Mexico that frankly just doesn't work," said Mark J. Spalding, who teaches international environmental law at UC San Diego. Steps are newly underway to cure the problem at its source in Mexico, where work has begun on more than $140 million in projects to expand Tijuana's sewer system and plug leaks that send a torrent of waste onto U.S. soil during heavy winter rains. Fast population growth means Tijuana will need all the treatment capacity it can get. Sending It Back to Mexico The upcoming negotiations between U.S. officials of the International Boundary and Water Commission and their Mexican counterparts focus on a proposal to send the waste water partly treated at the U.S. plant back to Mexico for final cleaning.U.S.-based entrepreneurs propose building a plant in Tijuana and charging the American government to run the facility under terms of a 20-year contract, still to be negotiated. The treated effluent could be sold to Tijuana factories for industrial use or piped back to the United States for discharge into the ocean. Effluent from the existing border plant, which travels to sea through a giant pipe, violates federal clean-water standards for ocean dumping. The proposed Tijuana plant, known as Bajagua, with a capacity of at least 50 million gallons, would further treat that waste water. The novelty of hiring a private company for the job has made some U.S. officials uneasy--one reason it has taken more than a year to begin binational talks that Congress called for last year. Mexican officials have expressed concerns, but foreign ministry officials say they are eager to begin the negotiations. The upcoming talks are but the latest turn in a long-running saga. It comes more than a decade after the two countries agreed on a plan that called for the United States to build and run the main plant north of the border, with help from Mexico, and to assume responsibility for treating the waste further so it can be piped into the ocean. Amid ceremony and optimism, that plant began operating fully in 1998 when the huge pipe, known as an outfall, that ferries waste to the ocean was completed. But a method for the second level of treatment has remained the topic of ferocious debate. U.S. officials withdrew a proposal for an adjacent plant in the face of a lawsuit by the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation, then suggested a series of open-air treatment ponds. That idea stalled in the face of protests by residents who feared foul odors and a proliferation of mosquitoes. Some Complain of Unknowns Amid the debate came the Bajagua proposal, offered by a U.S.-based investment partnership called AguaClara. The approach pleased many partisans, including some environmentalists. Congressional representatives and San Diego politicians became big backers, but leaders in Imperial Beach feared more delays by starting from scratch. Some environmentalists say the project includes too many unknowns, including final costs. Congress authorized $156 million over five years.The upcoming talks could end the squabbling--or add a fresh chapter to the sewage epic. "We don't know what Mexico is going to bring to the table. We have a framework in the negotiations, but I can't tell you what Mexico is going to propose," said Carlos M. Ramirez, commissioner of the U.S.section of the border commission. "This is a very unique situation. I don't think anything like this has ever been done," Ramirez said. "[The talks] could go quickly if Mexico doesn't have great concerns. Or if there are concerns, that could slow things down." U.S. Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), whose border district includes a swath of the affected area, charged that the border commission and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have delayed the negotiations. At a congressional hearing on the matter in December, the State Department announced that it was ready to begin the talks. Filner said the Bajagua idea is good for residents in both countries. But he conceded that details remain to be ironed out before the border's sewer problems are resolved. "We thought we were out of it when we got the plant built," Filner said. "I thought I was out of sewage. But I'm back into it." For information about reprinting this article, go to http://www.lats.com/rights Now in the process of updating . . . check back soon for more! |
