YUCATÁN, (July 08, 2021).- “The open-air garbage dumps are one of the main threats that damage the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve because they impact the soil and contaminate the aquifer”, reported Sandra García Peregrina, operational and administrative director of this area subject to ecological conservation.
Regarding the concern of environmental organizations and activists for possible impacts generated by the passage of the Maya Train in the Protected Natural Area, the official commented that, from the municipality, the generation of means is proposed so that the route is safe.
According to García Peregrina, one of the most visible problems within the reserve is the open-air garbage dumps: on the sidewalks, roads, and streets of the different municipalities that comprise it.
This situation generates important negative environmental impacts, since leachates, dark liquids that are produced by the decomposition of organic matter, which circulate among the waste found in landfills, contaminate the soil and subsoil, and these pollutants then filter into the aquifer, where we extract the water. and in other cases, garbage is burned, generating highly toxic gases and fumes.
“Generally, both municipal and federal natural protected areas require and present impacts like any other non-protected area, the difference is the actions that have to be taken; you must have a sustainability scheme, however, sometimes the application or failure of these systems is what generates the impacts, ” she said.
Maya Train Project
In September 2020, the director of the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur), Rogelio Jiménez Pons, and the mayor of Mérida, Renán Barrera Concha, signed a collaboration agreement with the aim of ensuring protection and long-term sustainability term of the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve; which will receive investment and environmental sanitation as part of the work actions of the Maya Train Project.
In this agreement, as promised by the federal and municipal authorities, prevention, restoration, mitigation, and environmental compensation measures are contemplated considering the passage of the Maya Train through the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve, all with an investment of 278 million pesos, which will be channeled to the Municipal Green Fund.
Sandra García indicated that, in this way, it is guaranteed that the compensation is directly applied. There is the commitment of the Mérida City Council and the reserve through this agreement, “It is a guarantee and assurance mechanism,” García Peregrina concluded.