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Published in Summer 2004
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Public reporting on industrial pollution in Mexico almost a reality
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By Jamie Bowman
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Note from the editor: After the following article was written, President Fox signed Mexico's mandatory reporting rule and it was formally published in Mexico's Diario Oficial on 3 June 2004. This puts Mexico and its North American partners at the forefront of international cooperation in promoting publicly accessible pollutant release and transfer registers. Much work still remains, however, as Mexico must now formally designate the substances to be reported. This will be based upon a list of 104 chemicals under the former voluntary reporting rule.
Every day, industrial facilities release toxic chemicals into the air, land and water. Many of these chemicals are breathed, absorbed or consumed by humans, causing a variety of health ailments as well as damage to the environment.
In Mexico, a country of more than 100 million people, few knew what toxic pollutants—or how much of them—are being released into the environment. But that's about to change.
For a decade, Mexican environmental groups have been clamoring for the public's right to know what toxic substances are being released into the environment. They, along with Mexico's NAFTA partners, Canada and the United States, have been quietly urging the administration to put in place an effective pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR), with mandatory and publicly accessible reporting by industry.
The CEC has also been actively supporting Mexico's development of a PRTR. The CEC Council, for instance, resolved in 1995 to promote public access to environmental information. A 1997 resolution specifically promoted North American PRTRs. In 2001, a round table discussion sponsored by the CEC brought together various stakeholders to plan a Mexican PRTR. And the CEC provided support to Mexican government officials to visit PRTR program offices in Canada and the United States. The CEC also provided help to the Mexico NGO community to promote greater awareness of the benefits of a PRTR for Mexico.
Now, after much work, change is looming large as Mexico appears poised to dramatically improve its PRTR, the Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (RETC).
When signed by Mexican President Vicente Fox, the new regulation will require industries under federal jurisdiction to measure, record and report emissions of all substances named on a government list of 104 chemicals going into the air, land and water. And, the new rule provides for public access to that information.
The new PRTR rule comes from legislation changes approved by the Mexican Congress in 2001. As a result, Mexico's environmental ministry (Semarnat), the states, the federal district and municipalities are now required to integrate data and documents into a comprehensive, national RETC. The plan has already cleared an exhaustive consultative and approval process of the results at various levels, including a legal team from the president's office.
Since the RETC was instituted in 1997, reporting has been voluntary. But only about five percent of industries bother to submit recorded data. More recently, air emission reporting has been required from some facilities. However, the government does not release the voluntary or mandatory data.
Nongovernmental organizations have suggested that the initial list of 104 chemicals is paltry, compared to the 650 listed in the United States' Toxics Release Inventory (established in 1986) and the 268 in Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory (established in 1993)—both of which are mandatory and publicly accessible.
But it's the start that's significant, says Paul Miller, program coordinator for air quality at the CEC.
"The first thing that is important is to get a mandatory rule with public access on the books," he said. "And in the initial years, it's important to establish a rule that's workable. So identifying fewer key substances and getting industry educated about reporting is the priority. Over time, you add substances. That's the way it was done in the United States and Canada."
Yet after over a decade of pushing for a better RETC, some environmental NGOs in Mexico worry whether President Fox will indeed sign the new rule. The documents have been in his office since early April, and a recent presidential decree suspending all new industrial regulation for one year, "to unleash investment and the generation of jobs," is seen as an unsettling and threatening development to ecologists.
"Environmental organizations are very worried that this decree may bring a new delay in the publication of the regulations for the RETC and set back the implementation even further," says Marisa Jacott, spokesperson for the NGO Fronteras Comunes and a member of the Comité Técnico Consultivo del RETC, the stakeholder discussion group set up by Mexico's environment ministry, Semarnat.
But the director general of Air Quality Management at Semarnat, Sergio Sánchez, says he is certain the register will be exempt from the moratorium, as it's the fulfillment of an international commitment. Indeed, Mexico committed to facility-specific mandatory RETC, with public access in a CEC Council resolution in June 2000.
Sánchez says Mexico plans to open the first phase of the register, with public access to existing information, at the end of the year. Mandatory reporting would follow.
"What is intended with the publication of the RETC regulation, is that the different sections of the Annual Certificate of Operations, the permit now requiring mandatory reporting of air emissions quantities, will be applied to emissions to ground and water, and to the transfers of dangerous residues, for the management of those substances," he said. "It is expected that information generated by industry in 2004 will be provided for public knowledge in 2005."
The reported information will be published in an annual report by Semarnat, and available on a web page. It will be free of charge, unless certification is requested, but Sánchez indicated some information would remain confidential.
"If an individual requests specific information from Semarnat and some government official does not provide it, there will be administrative sanctions, as long as such information is not classified as confidential or reserved," said Sánchez. If industries are found to be falsifying reports, "the company could face administrative sanction or prison, depending on the gravity of the falsification in the information."
The cooperation of state and municipal governments will be vital to the success of the system, says Jacott. "The problem will come at the time of compiling a national report, since not all the states are using the same methodology and mechanisms of reporting established by Semarnat for the industry under federal jurisdiction. As such, we worry about the integration and comparability of the data within a national scope."
Sánchez, however, says the process is on track and the open registry will be up and running next year. The government is committed to the new RETC "as a solid basis for policy-making, for decision-making, but also to contribute to the competitiveness and productivity in our industrial sector," he said.
Miller says that the regulation can be valuable to companies. When companies are compelled to record and report their releases, they frequently recognize that they're wasting chemicals, and "not using something as efficiently as you otherwise could have is a loss of money. That has led to money-saving redesigns of their industrial processes," he said.
Industry fully supports the legislation, according to Sánchez. While industry spokesman Alejandro Sosa says his associates like the concept, they're cautious that the devil could be in the details.
Sosa serves as president of the National Ecological Commission of Compromex, a business organization of 30,000 members, and of the Ecology Commission of the Mexican Chapter of the International Chamber of Commerce. He agrees the legislation was a long time coming, "but it has been preferable since the process gave us the necessary maturity to arrive at consensus."
With the coming public access, Sosa predicts businesses will likely face journalistic misinterpretation of selective data from the reports, as well as similar misuse by competitors. And, he said, industries will undoubtedly face lawsuits for damages caused by contamination.
However, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, says Miller. He commends Mexico for helping shape North America as a model for a growing international movement for publicly accessible industrial pollution information.
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