From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican
Date: 01 Oct 92 13:00 PDT
Subject: Mexico City's War on Smog
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1545800050:000:6405
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Oct  1 13:00:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Mexico City's War on Smog

/* Written 11:34 am  Sep 30, 1992 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.sample */
/* ---------- "Mexico City's War on Smog" ---------- */
From: Pacific News Service <pacificnews>
Subject: Mexico City's War on Smog

COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
450 Mission Street,  Room 506
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-4364



NEWS REPORT -- 860 WORDS

MEXICO CITY'S HIGH STAKES WAR AGAINST POLLUTION 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Close to suffocating in its super-polluted air, Mexico 
City has become a battleground in which a young technocrat with broad 
powers is fighting to make the city's air breathable once again. At stake 
is nothing less than President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's dream of 
transforming a third world country into a global economic-industrial 
power. PNS associate editor Walter Truett Anderson, apolitical 
scientist specializing on environmental issues, reports from Mexico 
City.

BY WALTER TRUETT ANDERSON, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

MEXICO CITY -- Like many things in Mexico, Mexico City's air 
pollution is on a grand scale. And the smog war launched to clean it up 
-- often criticized as heavy-handed -- is one of the biggest 
environmental cleanup projects anywhere in the world.

Czar of the smog war is Fernando Menendez Garza, a youthful, well-
educated, optimistic technocrat, the kind you frequently find occupying 
high governmental positions in Mexico these days. His "war room" in 
the old City Hall, sparsely decorated with aerial photographs, maps of 
the Valley of Mexico and a huge conference table, belies the vast budget 
of $4.5 billion he has been allocated. At stake in this war is nothing less 
than President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's dream of turning Mexico 
City into a world-class city with breathable air -- a fitting symbol of a 
Third World country transformed into a global industrial-economic 
power.

To win, Menendez must confront a daunting combination of natural 
geography and human activity. The Valley of Mexico, the vast, 
mountain-ringed basin that contains Mexico City and its suburbs, is 
home not only to between 15 to 20 million people but to millions of 
cars, trucks, buses and smaller motorized vehicles. At 7,500 feet above 
sea level, the valley's air is thin, with almost one-quarter less oxygen 
than sea level air. The low level of oxygen in turn reduces the 
efficiency of fuel combustion, and causes cars to produce even more 
pollutants than they would at lower altitudes.

Then, too, the valley is prone to temperature inversion: a layer of 
cooler air that sits like a lid atop the warmer air below and prevents 
smog from dispersing. In winter, when the smog tends to be worst, 
Mexico City often develops double inversion -- a higher layer of hot air 
with yet another layer of cooler air above that.

The result is that the noxious emissions produced at ground level -- 
which amount to almost 12,000 tons a day -- remain there until 
nightfall. Visitors from other great smog capitals, such as Los Angeles, 
weep and cough in amazement when they experience Mexico City's air. 
On occasion, ozone has reached such astronomical levels that the city 
has virtually shut down.

Menendez's major moves have been on the transportation front. To 
cut vehicle emissions -- a major source of pollutants -- he is pushing 
the expansion of public transit and drastic cut backs of private 
automobile use. New subway lines have been added to the city's 
already impressive subway system and another 25 miles are under 
construction. All 35,000 city buses have been refurbished with new 
engines that meet emissions-control standards. Owners of taxis and 
service vans are being required to change old units for newer ones with 
catalytic converters.

Although Mexico City has plenty of solo suburban commuters, 
freeways and traffic gridlock, its citizens seem far less addicted to their 
automobiles than their counterparts in cities like Los Angeles. When a 
local conservation group proposed getting commuters to voluntarily 
restrict the number of days they would use their cars to go to work, a 
surprisingly large number of commuters signed on. The government 
later made the program mandatory; now every car carries a colored 
sticker on its windshield and a number on its license plate indicating 
which day of the week it is not allowed to circulate. On any given week 
day, 20 percent of the cars are staying home.

Pemex, the huge government-owned petroleum monopoly which long 
resisted supplying unleaded gas, has now been nudged to supply it 
nationwide and to reduce lead content in other gasolines. Under orders 
from President Salinas, Pemex has also shut down its city refinery.

Even more ambitious, Menedez is changing Mexico City's role as a 
mecca for industries, "deemphasizing the capital as an industrial 
center," in his words. Hundreds of local industries have been fined 
and/or temporarily shut down, and numerous others have been forced 
to move out of the valley. Some environmentalists have criticized this 
as merely sending the pollution elsewhere to help clean up the capital. 
But Menendez says the industries will have to meet new and stricter 
emissions standards in their new locations.

Another war front is tree planting. With the cooperation of 
neighborhood groups, the city is planting hundreds of thousands of 
trees within its limits and expropriating land on the outskirts to piece 
together a green belt. Many more trees -- Menendez estimates around 
15 million -- have been planted in these rural areas.

 Commuters and vehicle owners complain, industry owners complain, 
and on occasion poor people complain about the smog war's arbitrary 
and authoritarian approach. In fact, the government is under constant 
criticism either for pushing too hard or for not pushing hard enough. 
But opinion polls show that residents overwhelmingly want cleaner 
air and support government efforts to get it. 

Victory is projected as a 40 percent reduction in 1990 emission levels by 
the year 2010. Menendez says that on some fronts the war is ahead of 
schedule, although the ozone problem remains out of control. He 
luxuriates in the awesome power he wields but also recognizes the 
vulnerability of his position. "They gave me four and a half billion 
dollars. I better produce something."

(09301992)	**** END ****	 COPYRIGHT PNS





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Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican