‘A Slow-Motion Chernobyl’: How Lax Laws Turned a River Into a Disaster

Looking after the Rivers around the world is of paramount importance and Modiji is doing the right thing in India.

If Mexico doesn’t want to be treated like a second-class nation, why should it be necessary for this new trade agreement, with possible penalties (yeah, right) to even have environmental conditions? Lax laws, powerless local, state officials? And where are those business tax revenues going? Whatever passes for a Mexican Congress should take a week, get off its collective rear end, and pass new laws. This is disgusting in this day and age. Or, declare an environmental emergency, round up those drug cartel bigwigs, foot soldiers, and put them to work cleaning up the rivers, building treatment plants. As for our spineless Democrats, making this a linchpin for their approval- is there anything about our lobbyist-controlled EPA in that new trade deal- kind of like the demands we’re supposedly making on Mexico? Of course not. Gutless, again.

This is the same Mexico where corruption runs rampant. Where governing officials and local police officers are on the payroll of drug cartels. And you expect their waterways to be any different?

That is the future of US waterways if Trump's gutting of the EPA goes on unabated.

The government of Mexico goes to the trouble of passing extensive laws, but below the corporate international level where things may sail along nicely - because they have to - below that, it’s red tape complications & obfuscation & in the end the laws (so many of them) are simply not enforced. Mexico has a poor environmental consciousness generally....look at the trash thrown willy nilly on the streets, & especially all the plastic bags blown out from the cities, adorning acres & acres of prickly desert plants....there for eternity. Look at what’s going on in Baja with the illegal fishing in the protected waters. Perhaps this rather endemic indifference to land preservation stems ultimately from the trauma of the conquest & the hundreds of years of cruel Spanish subjugation....yes it was hundreds of years ago, but it left a deep mark, as Octavio Paz so perfectly states. And of course grinding poverty.

The same story for all of Mexico's rivers. Most towns don't have sewage treatment plants, raw sewage goes straight to the rivers. There has never been a budget for this, yet there was enough money for a 13 billion dollar airport. The fines are ridiculously low, cheaper to pay the fine than spend the money on remediation. All are guilty, developers, businesses and individual citizens. If this was cleaned up, the savings on healthcare would be enormous, but it would affect sooo many special interests.

Trump's EPA sees this and thinks "look at all that unregulated money, why aren't we doing that"?

Face it. Mexico is a cesspool of drugs, gangs, corrupt politicians and a consumer economy that is quickly destroying the abundant ecosystems around Mexico City and the vast Yucatan peninsula. All you need to do is to visit the once pristine coastline that was Cancun to Tulum. Now it is wall to wall seedy hotels, bars, and tourist traps, which pollute the once pristine estuaries and bays that allowed fish and coral to flourish. Build the wall on our southern border. The degradation that Mexico has brought on their own citizens is heading north at rapid speed.

It is unfortunately true that too many people is always going to equal too much waste. Whether from tail pipes of commuters in first world countries, seepage from garment factories in third world countries or farm run off from any country, it’s just not possible to support the desired lifestyles of 8 billion people without environmental consequences.

And we have more of this to look forward to as trump decimates the EPA. Mercury, fracking waste, breathing coal dust...

Celanese, a Texas based corporation doing this... why doesn't USMCA allow imprisonment of their corporate officers?

There is no country, which has any significant human population, that can maintain healthy waterways. Because, it is not the specific country that is the problem, or its laws. it is human nature to over consume, pollute, and, not care about the environment. Read the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond for more information on our human tendency to self annihilation via environmental catastrophe.

It is unfortunate that the reporters don't mention that this river dumps all of these severe pollutants into the Pacific Ocean 10 miles northwest of San Blas, a popular tourist destination. This only adds to the degradation of our oceans, only one of the hundreds of sources across the world doing so.

So who are we to judge? All one has to do is look at what has been done in the last 3 years to the EPA.

The government IS the guilty. Just like what's happening here in the land of deregulation. Choose wisely in November, or it'll be too late.

The canal running through a residential area looks a lot better than the Gowanas Canal running through Brooklyn, a superfund site. Cleanup was delayed during the entire Obama administration and finally began in 2017, since the EPA administrator, Pruitt, dictated that superfund spending should be prioritized federal environmental spending. Instead of the federal government wasting resources on prosecuting Wyoming ranchers digging watering holes on their own property which resulted in zero pollution. Give credit where credit is due. NYC resisted having the site declared superfund because it would result in limitations on development opportunities for their well connected cronies. But they still expected the federal government to pay for the damage, despite the fact that NYC continues to dump raw sewage as well as partially treated sewage effluent into the toxic brew. Why is it that NYC has never been fined for the million gallons per year it dumps into the navigable waters of America plus the hundreds of millions of gallons of partially treated effluent. It is worthwhile to report on pollution in Mexico. But it is hypocritical to pretend that NYC is not a bigger problem than an industrial polluter in Mexico. Particularly when the sewage fees collected from users in NYC are more than sufficient to have built a 20th century waste treatment system but for the fact that the city diverts fees to other activities.

This is a snapshot of where we're headed now with relaxed environmental policies and reduced corporate liability for pollution.

I live near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The lack of water and expense of electricity (generated by diesel) makes recycling nearly self-defeating. Yet, it is a tourist mecca and the population in the surrounding areas has grown by leaps and bounds. Add to that, Costco, Home Depot, Walmart and any number of the large commercial outlets moving in, the waste is tremendous. ANSWER: The mega stores have to go all in on the only solution there is: use materials in every type of packaging that is made from soluble materials. For example potato starch materials. The onus is on them.

For decades industrialists have lamented environmental laws in the United States. We only have to look at other countries with lax environmental regulations to see the consequences of unchecked pollution. As the current administration unravels the laws on pollution the future seems grim. If not for our stricter laws, dozens of current superfund sites could now be exactly what is happening near El Salto.

Mexico. 1950 30 million people. 2019 120 million. I'm not sure how anyone can be surprised at the rising levels of pollution that result from these conditions. Nothing can survive that kind of population rise and the accompanying (and needed) development to support that kind of growth. Look at California, a leader in environmental regulation and awareness. 1950 ~10 million, now, ~40 million and it has the countries worst air, still. Increasing population always leads to a degraded environment. It has to. As more and more of the natural world is used to grow, feed, house etc ever more people, the environment will always take the hit. Better get used to it.