Environmental disaster in Holbox denounced

A toxic cloud and massive clearing of mangroves threaten the island.

The Holbox Development Council denounced an environmental disaster in the island’s municipality of Lazaro Cardenas, after five days of fire in the waste transfer center (wasteland) of the island.

According to Eduardo Pacheco Cetina, a member of the civilian organization, until Monday afternoon the conflagration was fought by volunteers, with the support of some hotels that provided pumps and hoses.

It was said that Navy personnel stationed in Cabo Catoche (43 kilometers east of the island) would come, as well as the municipal president of Lazaro Cardenas, the PRI-green-ecologist Emilio Jiménez Ancona; However, only the sailors arrived.

The lack of machinery — there is only one bad pipe that belongs to the mayoralty commissioner of the island — forced that inhabitants and even visitors to add efforts to extinguish the fire with hoses and buckets.

However, and after achieving a superficial control of the incident, comes the worst, according to comments in social networks, which alert of a toxic cloud, which they qualify as “very delicate,” because it is breathing air contaminated with plastics and hazardous waste.

In this regard, the delegation of the National Forestry Commission (Conafor) reported that they are aware of the fire, but because they are not forestry, by law, they are prevented from intervening.

An environmental chaos prevails in Holbox, as a result of new buildings, bars and hotels that are building without control, after cutting mangroves and filling lagoons and streams, while the authorities of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) and the Office of the Attorney General Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) allegedly do nothing to protect the environment.

Source: www.lajornadamaya.mx

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