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Tohono O'odham protest proposed toxic dump
GARY GAYNOR/Tucson Citizen
Ofelia Rivas is among 30 people protesting in front of the Mexican Consulate on south Sixth Avenue. The group is objecting to a planned toxic waste dump planned for Quitovac, Sonora.
La Choya Hazardous Waste Facility would be on sacred grounds
Tucson Citizen
Nobody asked Ofelia Rivas, a 50-year-old grandmother with long black hair and hands twisted from rheumatoid arthritis, if she wants a toxic dump on her people's ancestral lands.
But she's speaking out all the same.
"Stop the chemical waste dump in Quitovac," she said, standing outside the Mexican Consulate in Tucson at a noon protest Thursday. About 30 others, sporting matching T-shirts which featured a skull and crossbones sinking in a barrel of liquid and read "Stop the Dump," joined her.
The proposed site, La Choya Hazardous Waste Facility, is 25 miles south of the Tohono O'odham Nation and eight miles from Quitovac, one of the most sacred sites for Tohono O'odham, whose members live on both sides of the border.
The project would bring up to 45,000 tons of industrial waste from northwest Mexico to the Sonoran desert annually, according to Semarnat, Mexico's environmental protection agency.
Rivas, along with others in the Tohono O'odham Nation, learned about the proposed site this spring, well after the Mexican state and federal governments granted permits allowing the project's construction.
Mexico also failed to inform the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a timely fashion as required by an international agreement, Dave Jones, of the EPA's San Francisco office, said this summer.
Alfonso Flores, from Semarnat, said Mexico properly informed the public when it put an ad in a local paper and posted an announcement on a Web site.
"Nobody saw the ad and the people in Quitovac don't have Internet," Rivas said.
Rivas, a U.S. citizen, has spent much of her life on the Mexican side of the border in her father's village of Ch:Wi I-gersk. The tribe was divided when the United States acquired the northern part of Mexico after the U.S.-Mexico War in 1848.
Nobody asked Ofelia Rivas, a 50-year-old grandmother with long black hair and hands twisted from rheumatoid arthritis, if she wants a toxic dump on her people's ancestral lands.
But she's speaking out all the same.
"Stop the chemical waste dump in Quitovac," she said, standing outside the Mexican Consulate in Tucson at a noon protest Thursday. About 30 others, sporting matching T-shirts which featured a skull and crossbones sinking in a barrel of liquid and read "Stop the Dump," joined her.
The proposed site, La Choya Hazardous Waste Facility, is 25 miles south of the Tohono O'odham Nation and eight miles from Quitovac, one of the most sacred sites for Tohono O'odham, whose members live on both sides of the border.
The project would bring up to 45,000 tons of industrial waste from northwest Mexico to the Sonoran desert annually, according to Semarnat, Mexico's environmental protection agency.
Rivas, along with others in the Tohono O'odham Nation, learned about the proposed site this spring, well after the Mexican state and federal governments granted permits allowing the project's construction.
Mexico also failed to inform the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a timely fashion as required by an international agreement, Dave Jones, of the EPA's San Francisco office, said this summer.
Alfonso Flores, from Semarnat, said Mexico properly informed the public when it put an ad in a local paper and posted an announcement on a Web site.
"Nobody saw the ad and the people in Quitovac don't have Internet," Rivas said.
Rivas, a U.S. citizen, has spent much of her life on the Mexican side of the border in her father's village of Ch:Wi I-gersk. The tribe was divided when the United States acquired the northern part of Mexico after the U.S.-Mexico War in 1848.
Rivas and others question the project's safety, and cite a similar project in Hermosillo which they say the government approved in the same, hushed manner. It was later closed because of environmental concerns. Residents of the area report high incidents of cancer, and are still demanding the government clean up the remaining toxic waste.
The La Choya project has been stalled by the local government in Sonoyta, Son., which rejected the request for a required land permit by CEGIR, the private company proposing to build the project.
But few think CEGIR has given up yet.
"They stand to make a lot of money off this," said Ernesto Castro of a Sonoyta citizens group protesting the project.
Cesar Augusto Sandoval, from CEGIR, said in July that the company planned to go ahead with or without the Sonoyta council's approval.
Lisa Zander, a Tucson resident who joined the protest, said the waste site smacked of environmental racism.
"Indigenous lands are the first place people look to dump things on," she said.
Sky Jacobs of the Sky Island Alliance attended the protest and said he had traveled to the Quitovac area several times to study the endangered pygmy owl as a biologist with the University of Arizona.
"It's not the sort of place we should be putting a toxic waste dump," he said.
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