Calica deceives in its lawsuit against Mexico: Alicia Bárcena

In its lawsuit against the government of Mexico for 1.5 billion dollars and throughout its operation in the southeast of the country, Calizas Industriales del Carmen (Calica) has engaged in systematic falsehoods to hide the overexploitation of the land that was concessioned to it in 1986, said the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources, Alicia Bárcena.

For example, he said that the subsidiary of the American company Vulcan Materials has reported a lower reserve of limestone to national authorities to evade taxes and hide the ecological disaster caused.

He affirmed that in the presidential decree of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of last September 23, the expropriation of that land was not ordered, but rather it was declared, along with another 50 thousand hectares, a protected natural area. We are not expropriating; The land is still theirs, the only thing we say is that they cannot extract even one more gram of limestone, that’s for sure. That is to say, they should restore it, produce forest, or let’s see what they do, but limestone will not.

Bárcena explained the scope of the profound environmental damage caused by the exploitation of Calica since 1986: it is an ecological disaster, because limestone was extracted to be exported to the United States, where it is used to build roads; This exploitation went below the water table of an area that has a very important hydrological cycle, full of cenotes. Great environmental devastation and serious ecological imbalances have been caused in this region. There are 1,200 hectares that have been exploited.

To maintain these levels of abuse, Bárcena accused in the morning, The company has issued a series of false statements, such as that it has all the permits. It’s not true. Secondly, they denied engaging in abuses with limestone and exceeded the extraction and permits that were given in 1986. Then, they were granted another license in 2000 that extended their exploitation for 20 years. They no longer have permission since December 2020.

When submitting a report on Calica, he maintained that the company exploited 140 hectares of land with a depth of up to 12 meters, actually invading the water table. They lied when they stated that there were only seven cenotes, when in reality there were 17, but 13 were damaged, of which at least three are completely destroyed. For all of them, the last administration canceled all rock extraction permits.

Calizas Industriales del Carmen, a subsidiary of the American Vulcan Materials, overexploited 140 hectares in Playa del Carmen and Cozumel for 34 years. Photo ‘La Jornada’

Subsequently, he explained, the decree was published to convert the land into a protected natural area. “This company sued Mexico based on NAFTA – not the USMCA – for more than 1.5 billion dollars, because Mexico has already prohibited them, starting with President López Obrador, and has absolutely closed the extraction of limestone in the subsoil of Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. Semarnat and Profepa confirmed this damage, whose impact on the underground hydrological system is 20 times more than the authorized volume.”

The head of Semarnat also denounced the alteration of production reports, since the financial authority of the United States on the stock exchange, where it is listed, was informed of twice the reserves of stone material that it reported to Mexico, in order to evade taxes. .

In this context, he commented that with the presidential decree, López Obrador left 232 protected natural areas, totaling 50 in his six-year term. Bárcena highlighted the instruction of President Claudia Sheinbaum to design a national restoration plan that allows addressing ecosystems with high levels of degradation. and restore areas where endemic species reside, for which the dependency will be based on the Ecosystem Integrity Index.

He recognized that in Mexico, 42 percent of ecosystems have certain degrees of historical degradation. He stated that there is a conviction that with this program a goal of restoring 20 percent of the territory can be achieved, which can be achieved if the Tula, Lerma, Atoyac and Sonora rivers are cleaned; recover 30 percent of the mangroves of our 11 thousand kilometers of coast and reforest 10 percent of the forests and jungles in nine states of the Republic.

With this, the country will be able to fulfill its commitments of the 30-30-30 global agenda, which is 30 percent of terrestrial and 30 marine natural areas, by 2030.

On the other hand, Sheinbaum explained that he intends to carry out as federal policy a program developed during his government in Mexico City, called circular economy, which consists of the recycling of materials. To do this, the land that Felipe Calderón expropriated will be used for the failed refinery that he would build in Tula, but which will now be used to establish a recycling plant with various technological developments.

Another project, Bárcena explained, is the recycling of construction materials that can be reused, that is, the gravel can be converted into adocrete to be used in asphalt for roads.