On August 6, 2014, 40,000 cubic meters of toxic waste from the Buenavista del Cobre mine, owned by Grupo México, were spilled into the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers.
Agricultural production in the area vanished. All supply wells for livestock and agriculture were closed, a situation that collapsed the local economy, in addition to the imminent health risk of more than 24 thousand people.
“All our crops were ruined, there was no irrigation. Nobody wanted to buy meat from cows that were from here, neither milk nor cheese. Authorities told people not to consume anything that came from the Sonora River. It was all a loss for us,” says José Manuel López, a resident of the community of San José de Baviácora.
Seven years after the incident, there is no justice or reparation for the damages for communities, reported the also member of the Rio Sonora Basin Committees, in an interview with Journalism Causa Natura.
The economy has not fully recovered, but the most worrying thing for communities are the negative effects on the health of the population, which over the years have begun to become visible.
In the community of La Labor, inhabited by 60 people, there are three cases of colon cancer. In other locations, they have also noticed an increase in the number of people sick with some type of cancer, López explained.
In addition, there is a high incidence of gastrointestinal diseases, as documented by the Committees themselves.
At the end of 2021, the National Center for Preventive Programs and Disease Control (Cenaprece) conducted blood and urine studies on a sample of around 1,500 people from eight communities on the Sonora River, to determine levels and consequences of exposure to environmental pollutants typical of mining activities in the region, with possible effects on their health.
According to the civil organization Poder Latam, which provides legal support to those affected, in all communities it was found, through the toxicological analysis of urine, that the majority of the population has levels of positive exposure to heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and cadmium.
Meanwhile, blood tests found high levels of exposure to lead and cadmium.
Elena Pragos, co-executive director of Poder Latam, said that the authorities recognize that it merits a program to monitor water quality, of supply sources for direct use and consumption of human populations to reduce risk, as well as the implementation of a special surveillance system with a toxicological approach.
The results make it possible to observe, in general, that river water and underground wells continue to have levels of pollution that are not suitable for human health. This is not the first time, after the spill, that scientific studies have confirmed the presence of contaminants in the water.
On August 12, 2014, six days after the incident, Buenavista del Cobre officially recognized the spill. He attributed it to heavy rains.
On September 15 of the same year, in an agreement between federal authorities and Grupo México, the Sonora River Trust was created to respond quickly to the damages. In this agreement, Grupo México committed to contributing 2 billion pesos for the remediation.
This amount would be used, among other things, for the construction of 37 water purification plants, whose operation would be ready for the second half of 2015. However, according to the Power documentation, only one was launched and in less than a year it stopped working.
Later, Grupo México announced that it would only build nine plants, arguing that they were no longer necessary, based on the results of water quality studies carried out by the National Water Commission (Conagua).
In addition, in January 2015, the federal Ministry of Health announced the construction of the Sonora Epidemiological and Environmental Surveillance Unit (Uveas), which would be ready for the second half of the year, but is currently inoperative.
The lack of results forced the villagers to organize, said José Manuel López. Thus, in February 2015, they formed the Basin Committees, to demand justice and reparation.
The Committees began the legal battle. First, they filed an amparo judgment on the application of official water quality standards and the lack of standards, which made it possible to open water wells in poor condition after the spill.
In the same way, they protected themselves against the construction of a new Grupo México dam and the lack of an agricultural reactivation project, among others.
However, justice has not arrived, López added. “They have done all kinds of maneuvers to avoid compensating for the damage.”
“There is a person responsible and he has to pay”
For the Sonora River Basin Committees, there is a person responsible for the tragedy who must take charge. “It has a name and it's Grupo México,” López said.
Elena Pragos explained that of the 2 billion pesos available from the Rio Sonora Trust, only a part was effectively applied. On February 2, 2017, Grupo México and the federal government announced the closure of the Trust, which still had an exchange of 800 million pesos.
Subsequently, Pragos said, the Committees filed nine amparo lawsuits, demanding serious health effects on the population, as well as violations of their right to water.
Among its legal victories, in 2018 the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) protected the inhabitants of Bacanuchi to be included in environmental decisions, regarding the installation of a water treatment plant that did not meet the needs of clean water.
In 2019, the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) concluded the Sonora River's remediation work. As a result, the Committees filed a new amparo with the SCJN, where they demanded the termination of the trust and the termination of the remediation program.
The Court granted this protection to the inhabitants, rescinding the disappearance of the trust. He also asked Profepa to apply precautionary measures, in order to ensure full access to clean water and the relocation of contaminated wells.
José Manuel López pointed out that it is up to the authorities to compensate for some lawsuits, but it is Grupo México that they direct their demand to repair the damage caused.
Rio Sonora case: Q4 promises solutions
On July 9, 2019, the company Metalúrgica de Cobre S.A. de C.V, a subsidiary of Grupo México, spilled 3,000 liters of sulfuric acid into the Mar de Cortés, also in Sonora.
The then head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), Víctor Manuel Toledo, openly spoke out against the practices of the business group and assured that the agency had the capacity to suspend its operations completely.
“We are faced with a special situation of an industrial firm that has repeatedly had 22 accidents; it's no wonder. When a company or industry has this curriculum, with this trajectory, Semarnat has the legal capacity to suspend it,” said the then official.
However, the threat to the company did not materialize, as Toledo left his position as head of Semarnat in August 2020.
On September 2, 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported that he met with Germán Larrea, president of Grupo México, to address the problem.
It was until July 4, 2021 that the President, accompanied by the head of Semarnat, María Luisa Albores, presented the “Comprehensive Cananea Care Plan”, which includes the reassessment of damage, the reactivation of the Rio Sonora Trust (which was suspended) and the review of water concessions. He promised answers to the Cuenca Committees within a period of no more than three months.
But the answers haven't come completely, says José Manuel López.
“It's been three years since this new government and I feel like they're stunned. Right now they clarify that they needed new technical data, that those of the past authorities could not be trusted, because they were the ones who disappeared the Trust. Then, after that, they hold on, but there are still no major advances,” said the spokesman.
There are currently working groups in which Semarnat, Profepa and the Ministry of Health and the Secretariat of Labor and Social Security participate.
The Committees continue with the same demands as in 2014: the installation of functional water treatment plants in all communities of the nine affected municipalities; the completion of works and operation of the Sonora Epidemiological and Environmental Surveillance Unit, and the repair of the economic losses caused by the Buenavista del Cobre mine spill.
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