| Montreal, 16/12/2002 – The governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States have voted unanimously to instruct the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) not to prepare a factual record regarding allegations made by a Mexican nongovernmental organization.
Academia Sonorense de Derechos Humanos, A.C. and Domingo Gutiérrez Mendivil filed a citizen submission (SEM-01-001) with the CEC on 14 February 2001. They asserted that Mexico is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law with respect to alleged violations in the construction and operation of a hazardous waste landfill known as Cytrar.
The landfill--located near the city of Hermosillo--is no longer operating, but the submission claimed that hazardous wastes abandoned by the company Alco Pacifico, S.A. de C.V., and then deposited at the Cytrar landfill, should have been disposed of in the US. The Submitters also suggested that Mexico denied them access to environmental information detailing the nature and origin of the waste deposited in the landfill.
Mexico did not respond to the allegations, but instead informed the Secretariat that it should proceed no further with the submission since the matter is the subject of an international dispute resolution process before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The Secretariat however, upon careful analysis, determined that the two matters were distinct and recommended that a factual record be prepared.
The CEC Council--composed of the environment minister, or equivalent, of each North American country--delivered the first unanimous decision against pursuing a factual record with its resolution finalized 13 December 2002.
Under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), members of the public may submit a claim alleging a NAFTA partner has failed to effectively enforce its environmental law. The development of a factual record is the last step in the citizen submission process and requires the approval of two-thirds of the CEC Council.
The full text of the submission, the Secretariat's factual record recommendation and the Council's resolution are available online at the CEC web site http://www.cec.org/citizen. | 
