New wastewater plant coming on line on Mexican

New wastewater plant coming on line on Mexican

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Ruben Mena
From:
Ruben Mena
Sent:
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 10:12 AM
To:
Fernando Macias, Norte; Javier Cabrera, Bravo
Cc:
Donald Hobbs; Gonzalo Bravo
Subject: News for 5/10/05
New wastewater plant coming on line on Mexican border
YUMA, Ariz. A new wastewater treatment plant is scheduled to start operating in October in the
Mexican border community of San Luis Rio Colorado near Yuma.
It'll be a welcome addition because the town currently dumps its raw sewage into the dry Colorado River
bed.
The plant will initially serve about half the people in the city, which is across the border from San Luis,
Arizona.
A city official says it will eventually be expanded to serve the entire community.
The mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado says he's been concerned that sewage dumping is contaminating
the river bed.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press
Posted on Tue, May. 10, 2005
Odds stacked against building U.S. oil refinery
By Jad Mouawad
NEW YORK TIMES
About 100 miles southwest of Phoenix, in a remote patch off Interstate 8, Glenn McGinnis is seeking to
do something that has not been done for 29 years in the United States. He is trying to build an oil
refinery.
Part of his job is to persuade local officials and residents to allow a 150,000-barrel -a-day refinery in
their back yard -- no small task. Another is to find investors ready to risk $2.5 billion in a volatile
industry. So far, the effort has consumed six years and $30 million, with precious little to show for it.
Even so, McGinnis -- an industry veteran who joined Arizona Clean Fuels last year as chief executive
to give the project more heft against long odds -- cleared a significant hurdle recently when Arizona
awarded him a crucial emissions permit. Still ahead are countless rounds of negotiations with local,
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state and federal agencies to secure dozens more permits.
Meanwhile, the 1,400-acre site picked for the refinery, an old citrus grove near the Mexican border,
remains empty, a sign of why the United States is now grappling with an acute shortage of plants that
can refine the more than 20 million of barrels of crude oil that the country consumes every day.
The last refinery to be completed in the United States was in 1976, and McGinnis knows all too well
that community and political opposition squashed earlier projects. His proposed refinery in Arizona has
already been forced away from its original site near Phoenix. That happened in 2003, after the state
considered expanding the city's clean-air limits.
But times may be changing, said McGinnis, who has worked for Exxon and El Paso and has been in the
business for 33 years, running refineries in the United States and Aruba.
"The moon and the stars have aligned for us," he said, speaking on his cell phone between discussing
crude oil supplies with Mexico's state oil company. "We're halfway through, and we still have a lot of
work."
Long considered the ugly duckling of the oil industry, the refining business is now in the spotlight as
Americans complain about sticker shock at the gasoline pumps and higher energy prices overall.
President Bush has taken notice. Last month, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, visiting the
president at his Texas ranch April 25, chided him with the message that his country could send more oil
but the United States would not have the ability to refine it. Soon afterward, Bush offered to provide
closed military bases for new refineries.
Over the past quarter-century, the number of refineries in the United States dropped to 149, less than
half the number in 1981. Because companies have upgraded and expanded their aging operations,
refining capacity during that time period shrank only 10 percent from its peak of 18.6 million barrels a
day. At the same time, gasoline consumption has risen by 45 percent.
But in the past two years, the refining business has experienced a revival of sorts, leading some refiners
to predict they have entered an age of higher margins and better returns. Not everyone agrees, but for
the first time in a long time the industry is more confident about itself. Even with better economics,
however, it is still tough to build a refinery from scratch. McGinnis says he is not afraid of the
challenge. He and his staff work in a small office in Phoenix, mostly consumed these days with
securing permits and looking for financial backing.
The next step is to complete an environmental impact statement for the federal Bureau of Land
Management. That will include an assessment of the refinery's effect on underground water sources and
endangered species, as well as its effect on any American Indian burial grounds.
After that, the project needs to get the site's zoning changed by Yuma County from agricultural to
heavy industrial; Arizona's preservation office needs to be convinced that the refinery does not trample
on any ancient historic site or trail; and finally, the project must apply for a presidential permit, which
is issued by the State Department, to allow the crossing of a 200-mile pipeline into Mexico.
The business of turning crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel or heating oil has rarely been a lucrative
proposition. It has dismal profit margins compared with its more glamorous cousin, exploration. It is
highly cyclical and fairly unpredictable, because demand for gasoline swings sharply by season. And
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because of low oil prices over the past decades, refiners have been forced into cutthroat competition
that has driven many of the smaller refiners out of business.
More refining capacity will almost certainly be needed. Gasoline demand is forecast to rise 39 percent
by 2025, to 12.9 million barrels a day, up from today's 9.3 million barrels, according to a long-term
outlook by the Energy Information Administration. By then, gasoline will account for nearly half the
crude oil consumed in the United States.
By contrast, domestic refining capacity is expected to grow only by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2007,
slightly less than the 0.9 percent increase registered between 1998 and 2004, according to a note by
Jacques Rousseau, an oil analyst with the investment banker Friedman, Billings, Ramsey.
Jay Saunders, who follows oil companies for Deutsche Bank, said that the increase in refining margins
would lead to increased capacity. "The industry is definitely going to overbuild," he said, "they have in
the past and they will in the future."
Others also caution that the industry should be wary of recreating a glut of capacity that would cause
profit margins to sink again. "Refining has been a cyclical business for a long time," said Bill
Hauschildt, the vice president for global refining with Chevron. "In the past few years, there's been
much more discipline in the market for not overbuilding capacity."
Part of the issue, according to refiners, is that substantial investments were made over the past decade
to lower carbon emissions and meet low-sulfur fuels regulations. The American Petroleum Institute
estimates the industry invested $47 billion on such investments. More investments will be needed
through 2007 to clean up gasoline and diesel.
"This is going to cost you money, and the only thing you will get is cleaner air and less emissions -which are good -- but no new capacity," said Edward Murphy, the industry group's general downstream
sector manager.
"What refiners need are clear guidance on what's permissible and what is not if they want to expand,"
Murphy said. "So far, that has not been very clear."
To make up for the domestic shortfall, gasoline imports from Europe and South America have been
rising in recent years. Gasoline imports now account for nearly 10 percent of domestic consumption
and exceeded a million barrels a day on average throughout April.
But even as the United States grows more reliant on foreign gasoline, it will face mounting competition
from other buyers where demand is similarly growing, like China and India. "More competition means
imports might become more expensive," said Joanne Shore, an analyst with the Energy Information
Administration, an agency in the Department of Energy.
For Bob Slaughter, the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, the industry's
main trade group, "The question now is to keep the growth in imports at a reasonable level." He expects
additional capacity will come from expansion of existing projects and not from the construction of new
refineries like the one in Arizona.
"That process," Slaughter said, "is almost inexhaustible."
Even if all goes to plan and investors are found, McGinnis' envisioned refinery will not be ready before
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late 2009.
The prospect of a new employer, 3,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent posts in the region has
done a lot to outweigh concerns over the project, said John Nussbaumer, the mayor of Wellton, a city
of 1,900 people about 20 miles from the refinery site.
"Of course I am concerned about the effects on the environment," he said. "Would I rather see it
somewhere else? Yes. Would I oppose it at this time? No. It's been too long since a new refinery was
built in the United States. Anything we can do to reduce our dependency on the Middle East is a good
thing."
El Bravo, 10 de mayo,2005
En el marco de Ciudades de Calidad
Construirán relleno sanitario regional
* Atestigua Eugenio compromiso de municipio y Nadbank para realizar
esta obra
Durante un evento que encabezaron el gobernador Eugenio Hernández Flores y el
alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa, la secretar ía de Desarrollo Urbano y Ecología
recibió equipo para incorporar al servicio de Limpieza Pública y Parques y
Jardines, así como también, se firmó la carta compromiso con Raúl Rodríguez
Barocio, director gerente del Nadbank para la creación del relleno sanitario que
será de carácter regional, lo que permitir á recibir los desechos que se generen en
el vecino municipio de Valle Hermoso.
En esta ceremonia, el director gerente del Banco de Desarrollo para América del
Norte, -Nadbak, por sus siglas en inglés- reveló que en Tamaulipas se invierten
107 millones de dólares en proyectos de saneamiento, como lo es el relleno
sanitario que será construido en Matamoros, con recursos a fondo perdido ya que
el 80 por ciento son recursos no reembolsables que aporta el banco, esto, gracias
a las negociaciones logradas con el gobierno de Estados Unidos.
Comentó que independientemente de la inversión antes mencionada para obras
de saneamiento del medio ambiente, también se analizan proyectos potenciales
para los diferentes municipios de Tamaulipas, en donde se invertirán 350 millones
de dólares.
Rodríguez Barocio manifestó que esa inversión se podrá aplicar en Tamaulipas en
virtud de que a nivel estatal el Gobernador Eugenio Hernández Flores y a nivel
local el alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa han asumido con liderazgo la entidad y el
municipio de Matamoros, respectivamente.
"Se ha tenido una transición tranquila, responsable, madura entre las
administraciones estatales anterior y actual; y entre las administraciones
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municipales anteriores y actuales; nos consta en el Banco porque los trabajos que
veníamos desarrollando desde hace años, hoy continúan sin ningún problema; se
construye sobre lo logrado y se aprovecha esta inercia para hacer más y más",
explicó.
ENTREGA EUGENIO 21 CAMIONES PARA LIMPIEZA
Luego de que entreg ó las llaves de 21 camiones, de barredoras, podadoras y
uniformes a los empleados de Limpieza P ública, el gobernador Eugenio Hernández
Flores dijo que las acciones realizadas en esta ciudad "refrendan mi compromiso
de lograr entre todos ciudades de calidad y sobre todo, trabajar unidos para
avanzar en el otorgamiento de más y mejores servicios públicos".
Como Gobernador del Estado agregó, estoy plenamente convencido que las
ciudades y comunidades de Tamaulipas tienen que desarrollarse sobre mejores
bases para hacer frente a los retos de nuestro gran crecimiento.
Destacó que en este gobierno estatal se trabaja intensamente a favor de las
ciudades para mejorar su funcionamiento y ponerlas al servicio de la gente, "en
esta tarea, el tratamiento eficaz de los desechos sólidos juega un lugar muy
destacado por eso me da mucho gusto estar aquí y atestiguar la firma de la carta
de colaboración entre el municipio de Matamoros y el Banco de Desarrollo de
América del Norte para el proyecto regional del relleno sanitario".
Hernández Flores dijo que tiene claro que "la realización de proyectos de esta
magnitud son posible cuando sumamos recursos, estrechamos niveles de
colaboración entre los órdenes de gobierno y contamos con el apoyo del
financiamiento de organismos internacionales".
En ese sentido el Jefe del Ejecutivo Estatal agradeció al tamaulipeco Raúl
Rodríguez Barocio por su labor para canalizar a través del Banco de Desarrollo de
América del Norte los recurso necesarios para sacar adelante los proyectos de
infraestructura ambiental y saneamiento.
FIRMAN CARTA DE INTENCION CON EL NADBANK
En el marco de este misma ceremonia, el alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa y el
director gerente del Nadbank firmaron la carta de colaboración para la creación de
relleno sanitario, documento que también signó el gobernador Eugenio Hernández
Flores como testigo de honor.
También se firmó una carta intención entre el alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa y
el presidente municipal de Valle Hermoso, Alberto Enrique Alanís Villarreal y como
testigos de honor el Jefe del Ejecutivo Estatal y el director gerente del Nadbank.
Con dicho acuerdo se da un paso más en el camino de la colaboración y la
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integración de esfuerzos regionales, toda vez que los desechos que se generen en
Valle Hermoso ser án depositados en el relleno sanitario que será construido en
Matamoros, esto, sin cargo alguno al municipio vecino.
Por su parte el alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa dijo que en tiempos recientes,
Matamoros se enfrentó al gran desafío de haber agotado su espacio para el
confinamiento definitivo de los residuos que producen sus habitantes, "las
estimaciones más conservadoras producidas por instituciones como el Consejo
Nacional de Población y el INEGI colocan a Matamoros en el rango del medio
millón de habitantes".
Ello significa agreg ó, que en nuestra ciudad se producen casi 500 toneladas
diarias de basura, lo cual nos ha representado la obligación de recolectar y
disponer tan solo en este año de 165 mil toneladas de desechos.
Por eso señor Gobernador, hago de su conocimiento que trabajamos en la
apertura de un relleno sanitario, con apego a las normas ambientales y con
capacidad suficiente para resolver el destino final de los desechos no peligrosos
de Matamoros y Valle Hermoso por los próximos 40 años, afirm ó.
Se trata dijo, de una extensión de 113 hectáreas, ubicada a 20 kilómetros de la
ciudad, cuya primera etapa de este confinamiento será puesta en funcionamiento
en 70 días, lo que hará posible depositar adecuadamente en este año, 114 mil
toneladas de desechos producidos por Matamoros y Valle Hermoso.
Más tarde, el gobernador Eugenio Hernández Flores y el alcalde Baltazar Hinojosa
Ochoa se trasladaron a uno de los salones del Hotel Holiday Inn, en donde qued ó
oficialmente integrado el Consejo de Evaluación de la Cuenca de los Ríos Bravo y
San Juan.
May 10, 2005: El Mañana (Matamoros): Iniciarán construcción de nuevo relleno sanitario
Iniciarán construcción de nuevo relleno sanitario
Matamoros, Tam.(El Mañana).- El presidente municipal Baltazar Hinojosa
Ochoa aseguró que en 70 días estará en funcionamiento el nuevo relleno
sanitario, cuya construcción empieza en unos días.
Estará a 20 kilómetros en sur de la ciudad y será compartido con el municipio de
Valle Hermoso. Se prevé que a finales de este año se estén depositando en él
unas 350 toneladas de basura diaria.
Se iniciará la obra con una inversión de tres millones de pesos, con los cuales
cuenta el Ayuntamiento y 60 mil dólares que serán aportados por el Banco para el
Desarrollo de América del Norte.
Se construirá en un terreno de 103 hect áreas que costará dos millones de pesos.
Al principio se estar án depositando en el relleno sanitario regional 114 toneladas
de basura, pero al final del año el volumen aumentará a 350 toneladas, explicó el
presidente municipal.
De los costos de operación comentó que será más barato que el actual relleno
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sanitario, sin embargo los detalles serán dados a conocer conforme avance el
proyecto.
Subrayó, sin embargo, que el problema de la limpieza no termina con esto, pues
están detectados 22 tiraderos clandestinos, de los cuales algunos abarcan hasta
ocho hectáreas.
Se necesita que la población coopere, comentó, y advirtió que actuará en
consecuencia contra quienes fomenten la creación de basureros clandestinos en la
ciudad.
“Llevo ya trece limpios, y yo me comprometí que durante todo el año voy a
trabajar hasta que ya no exista un basurero clandestino en Matamoros, que
permita tener una ciudad más limpia ”, aseguró el alcalde.
Advirtió: “Y para eso se necesita la participaci ón de todos. Aquellos que me ven,
aquellos que en un momento me escuchan, que sigan finalmente tirando la
basura en estos basureros clandestinos, pues, obviamente actuaremos en
consecuencia ”.
May 9, 2005
Baja California News
NAFTA COMMISSION TO REVIEW BAJA ECOLOGY COMPLAINT
The Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has agreed to review a
binational citizen complaint against a natural gas re-gasification terminal planned for a zone off the
coast of Baja California. Pursued by environmental groups and activists from Mexico and the United
States, the complaint charges that a terminal slated near the Coronado Islands threatens the breeding
grounds of the endangered seabird Xantu's Murrelet and other species considered at risk. The
submitters of the complaint include Greenpeace Mexico; The Center for Biological Diversity, Alfonso
Aguirre; Shay Wolf; American Bird Conservancy; Los Angeles Audobon Society; Pacific Environment
and Resources Center; and Wildcoast.
The environmentalists contend that an environmental impact statement of the re-gasification project
which was prepared by Mexico's Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat)
ignored provisions of the country's General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection.
They question Semarnat's assessments that environmental impacts related to tanker and gas terminal
activity would be insignificant, citing several key issues supposedly glossed over by Mexican
authorities, including the impacts of light pollution on nocturnal seabirds; the risk of catastrophic
explosions; and the possible ecological disruptions brought about by introducing invasive animals, rats,
to the Coronado Islands. The submitters also allege that the Mexican government did not take into
account the Coronado Islands' status as a specially protected area since July 2003.
Currently, the CEC Secretariat is analyzing whether the citizen submission complies with requirements
under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. After reviewing the submission,
the CEC might decide to investigate the complaint and publish a factual record of its findings, which
then would be forwarded to the two parties. Established as the environmental side commission of the
North American Free Agreement, the CEC is an advisory body which does not have enforcement
authority.
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Source: CEC, May 6, 2005. Press Release.
May 9, 2005
Reynosa and Tamaulipas News
CITY MULLS USED TIRE MESS
Strewn in and around border cities, used tires are considered not only an eyesore but an
environmental hazard as well. They provide breeding grounds for possible insect-borne
diseases and sometimes catch on fire, releasing toxic fumes into the atmosphere. In 2004,
estimates of the number of discarded tires littering the northern border region of Mexico
surpassed 10 million. Many were imported from the United States. Nearly 2 million of the old
treads were dumped in Tamaulipas state alone. Now, authorities in the border city of
Reynosa, where about 500,000 used tires are accumulating, say they are reviewing strategies
to clean up the problem in their municipality.
Regino Bermudez Alvear,president of the Reynosa City Council’s ecology commission,said at
a meeting late last week that authorities are considering proposals to construct two temporary
collection and transfer stations for used tires in his city.
"What we are proposing are centers where trailers would be located and tires putin them,"
said Bermudez.
"It would be closed and cordoned off in order to prevent it from becoming a dump. It only will
be a transfer center."
Bermudez said that the council will seek an agreement with the major cement company
CEMEX for the final disposition of the tires. According to the councilman, CEMEX is the only
entity so far that has shown interest in acquiring used tires.
Mexico’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources reached an agreement last year
with national cement companies to promote the massive incineration of tires in order to
recycle the old rubber and generate fuel used in the production of cement.
However, the process is controversial, and some non-governmental groups like the
Chihuahua Commission in Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights (COSYDDHAC) are
protesting incineration on the grounds that it releases dioxin, mercury and other contaminants
into the environment. Mexican environmental authorities have disputed the claims.
Reynosa Mayor Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca added that although CEMEX is the only
company to have expressed interest in recycling used tires, others are welcome to step
forward. "Whether it is one or two or more companies," said the mayor. Other, unnamed
Reynosa City Council members commented that society as a whole should get involved in
taking urgent action to curb the environmental dangers posed by the used treads.
Sources: La Prensa (Reynosa), May 8, 2005. Article by Aldo Hernandez J. El Mexicano (Ciudad Juarez),
September 2, 2004. Diario de Juarez, August 25, 2004.
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Article by A Loyola and O. Volchanskaya. COSSYDHAC, et. al, July 2004. Letter to President Vicente Fox.
El Sur/AFP (Acapulco), June 25, 2004.
5/13/2005