| Montreal, 9/10/2007 – On 4 October 2007 the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) received a revised submission in which the Asociación Ecológica Santo Tomás and the Tabasco Human Rights Committee (Comité de Derechos Humanos de Tabasco) (the “Submitters”) assert that Mexico is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law with respect to the disposal of drilling waste in Cunduacán, Tabasco.
Submission SEM-07-005 (Drilling Waste in Cunduacán) was submitted to the CEC Secretariat on 26 July 2007. The Secretariat determined on 12 September 2007 that the submission did not satisfy all requirements of Article 14 of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and granted the Submitters a period of 30 business days to file additional information.
In the revised submission, the Submitters clarify the law cited in the submission and reiterate that the drilling waste treatment project in Cunduacán in the state of Tabasco began to operate without the required environmental authorization, illegally deposited the drilling waste and failed to remediate the site, without enforcement actions from the federal environmental authorities against the site owners.
The CEC Secretariat will now analyze the revised submission to determine whether it meets the requirements of Article 14 of the NAAEC.
The CEC citizen submission mechanism allows citizens to play an active "whistleblower" role in matters relating to environmental law enforcement. Pursuant to NAAEC Article 14, any citizen or nongovernmental organization may file a submission where it believes that a NAFTA partner is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law. After reviewing the submission, the CEC may investigate the matter and publish a factual record of its findings.
For more information, please visit the CEC's Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters page.
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