Tijuana, Mexico - When the wind picks up in this industrial city, lead dust from an abandoned battery recycling plant sifts through Andrea Pedro's doorway. It coats her floors and silverware. And it creeps into her children's blood. Since Mexico closed the plant a decade ago for illegally dumping hazardous waste, Pedro and other residents of an adjacent community have been trying to force U.S. or Mexican authorities to clean up the Metales y Derivados recycling center, which is owned by a California businessman. But the arena-sized site remains open to the elements, encircled by a chain-link fence cut with holes large enough for workers to slip through so they can shorten their walk to a nearby factory. They trudge past mounds of old car battery casings and stacks of rotting barrels spewing lead slag, creating clouds of toxic dust with every step. "The lead can even destroy concrete," Pedro marveled as she led a visitor through the site, pointing to a wall that had sunk about a yard into the toxic soil. "What will it do to our children?" Metales y Derivados has become a symbol of what many environmentalists consider the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement to adequately protect natural resources since it dismantled trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada one decade ago on Jan. 1. "By increasing trade, NAFTA was supposed to create more resources to protect the environment," said Constance García of the Border Environmental Justice Campaign, a San Diego-based group that is lobbying to clean up the Metales y Derivados site. "Ten years later, that promise hasn't been kept." NAFTA's defenders counter that Mexico's environmental record is better now than it was before the pact. They note that many factories created in Mexico under NAFTA pollute less than their older, U.S. counterparts do. What's more, a bi-national NAFTA bank and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have poured more than a half-billion dollars over the past decade into such projects as cleaning contaminated water and improving air quality in border areas that have grown under NAFTA. "NAFTA created a government-to-government dialogue on environmental border issues that didn't previously exist," said Adam Greene, director of corporate responsibility for the New York-based U.S. Council for International Businesses. Critics counter that agencies created under a NAFTA side pact to safeguard the environment are underfunded and toothless. They say contamination from some NAFTA-related industries and agribusinesses in Mexico has continued unchecked and even crossed into U.S. border areas. Among their concerns: In Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border city south of El Paso, Texas, air pollution generated in part by trucks that transport goods destined for the United States under NAFTA may have contributed to the hospitalization of thousands of children and the deaths of hundreds of others between 1997 and 2001 from respiratory illnesses, according to a recent study by NAFTA's environmental watchdog group. The pollution levels are similar in El Paso. In Nogales, Ariz., a bi-national waste treatment plant is spewing millions of gallons of contaminated water daily into a wash that feeds into the Santa Cruz River. The plant is unable to adequately treat the overload of industrial and household waste from neighboring Nogales, Mexico, where industry has mushroomed and the population has doubled under NAFTA. Cancer and lupus rates are unusually high in Nogales, Ariz., and while there is no scientific proof, community activists suspect contaminated water may be partly to blame. Citizens had to sue authorities to get them to agree to expand the plant to handle the overload, but nearly three years later, the officials are still deadlocked on the redesign. NAFTA has loosened U.S. inspection requirements for foods imported from Mexico and Canada. Environmentalists say that raises the risk of illnesses such as hepatitis A, which recently killed three people and sickened hundreds more in Pennsylvania. U.S. authorities say Mexican scallions were to blame and suspect they were improperly washed or handled there. In many ways, the Metales y Derivados story is a NAFTA Catch-22. The plant, which brought U.S. batteries to Mexico for recycling, pre-dates NAFTA by years. But after the government closed it in 1994 and its owner fled prosecution to San Diego a year later, it became a leading candidate for cleanup under the NAFTA environmental accord. Besides blowing onto the homes of Colonia Chilpancingo, a working-class neighborhood at the foot of the abandoned site, the contaminants - including lead and arsenic - wash into a nearby creek when it rains. The noxious, opaque waterway weaves through a warren of shacks housing newly arrived migrants seeking factory jobs created under NAFTA. Residents draw water for washing from wells just a few yards from the creek. For years, residents of Colonia Chilpancingo have complained of skin rashes, gastrointestinal ailments and other health problems. A variety of tests found lead levels twice the U.S. average in Chilpancingo children, including Andrea Pedro's daughter, Lupita, 5, who has learning disabilities, frequent bloody noses and respiratory problems. But it wasn't until February that the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established by NAFTA to monitor environmental effects of the pact, finally issued a report on the site, concluding it poses "grave harm to human health." Because it lacks enforcement powers, the commission can't authorize cleanup, which is expected to cost upward of $6 million. That must be done by two other NAFTA environmental agencies, the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission and the North American Development Bank, which is jointly funded by the United States and Mexico. The state of Baja California has asked the agencies for cleanup funds. But NADBank issues only loans, rather than grants, for hazardous waste cleanup. So far, the cash-strapped Mexican state hasn't been able to qualify because it can't prove it can repay the funds, officials from the two agencies said. Credit worthiness has blocked many small communities from obtaining NADBank loans, which have totaled $94.7 million to date, even though the bank is authorized to finance projects totaling $3 billion. The EPA can't clean up Metales y Derivados either because it can only fund cleanups of Mexico sites that affect the U.S. environment. "It's frustrating, because it's really a very simple site," said Tomas Torres, EPA program coordinator for the western border. Nor can NAFTA's environmental agencies force the plant's owner, José Kahn, to take action. Kahn did offer one cleanup plan that the agencies rejected as inadequate. He lives and works freely in San Diego, though he's a wanted man in Mexico for breaking environmental laws. Reached by telephone, Kahn said he remains "actively interested" in cleaning up the site but offered no details before hanging up. Mexican officials said they haven't asked U.S. authorities to extradite Kahn because the legal proceedings are complex and costly. The country has no superfund to clean the site itself. Some Mexican environmental officials say a tougher NAFTA oversight body might have forced more action. "Unfortunately, NAFTA still protects the investors more than it protects the environment," said Alejandra Goyenechea Orellana, director of international affairs for Profepa, the enforcement arm of Mexico's environmental protection agency. So, sometimes, do Mexican authorities. Funding for onsite inspections of manufacturing plants has dropped 45 percent since NAFTA, according to a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study. In one high-profile case in which Mexico did side with environmentalists over investors, a special tribunal created to hear NAFTA disputes ruled against it. In 2000, the tribunal ordered Mexico to pay $15.6 million to a Delaware-based company, Metalclad, for refusing to let it operate a toxic waste site in the state of San Luis Potosí. That's enough money, critics note, to clean the abandoned Metales y Derivados plant in Tijuana. "What are the NAFTA agencies waiting for before they
clean this up?" Pedro asked bitterly. "A pile of dead bodies?"
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