A column of groundwater 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 feather, as it continues its underground movements, will undoubtedly threaten more Mexican citizens who are unlucky 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 the 26 felonies, was fined tens of thousands of dollars, and shut down its operation. Despite all this, lead waste that is estimated to fill two waist-high football fields remains at the site and continues to seep into the groundwater system.
Interestingly, 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 across the US border, 20 miles away in an exclusive San Diego neighborhood. The Mexican government simply does not have the power to subject you to the process of law.
In 1972, José Kahn, a Chilean who obtained US citizenship in 1971, opened a lead smelting operation called Metales & Derivados in Tijuana, Mexico. Kahn processed old American car and boat batteries, shipping the lead-containing slag or waste to Europe for further processing. Environmental laws of the 1980s made it economically unviable to continue shipping the slag to Europe, so Kahn began dumping the waste on his own Tijuana property. In 1987 and again in 1989, the Mexican government ordered Mr. Kahn to begin cleaning up the Metales & Derivados site. He never complied. In 1994, environmental officials closed their operation. Unfortunately, no one, including the Mexican government, had the money to start such a massive cleanup effort, so the waste 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 untouchable by Mexican authorities.
Today, Mr. Kahn’s lead-contaminated property case is in the hands of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the agreement that eliminated import duties on goods traded between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In 1998, citizens of Tijuana and San Diego brought the case to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, NAFTA’s environmental watchdog group. The commission issued its report on Metals & Derivatives, but the report has not yet been released and may never be published. Lead waste at the site remains to this day, threatening nearby communities where significant numbers of children live.
Both Mexican and American citizens are waiting to see if the freedom created by NAFTA will be textured with sufficient oversight and legal authority to safeguard the Mexican people from the onslaught of environmentally rogue companies like Metales & Derivados. Politicians in Washington promised that this protection would go hand in hand with the approval of the free trade agreement; the citizens of both countries are waiting to see if Washington delivers on these promises.