world's largest salt evaporation plant halted!

On March 2, 2000, President Ernest Zedillo of Mexico announced that Mexico, in partnership with Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation, would not proceed with plans to build the world's largest salt evaporation plant in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of San Ignacio Lagoon on the Pacific Coast side of Baja, California. This ends Mexico's largest conservation vs. development battle that spanned five years.

San Ignacio Lagoon is part of the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve established by Mexico in 1988 and is the last undeveloped nursery and breeding ground in the world of the Pacific gray whale. The pristine lagoon is also critical habitat for the near-extinct prong-horned antelope and an important environment for black turtles, bottlenose dolphins, numerous bird species, approximately 60 other animal species, and 14 plant species.

The $120-million saltworks proposal included 116 square miles of salt ponds and disposal sites and the pumping of 6,000 gallons of saltwater per second out of the lagoon around the clock. Exportadora de Sal, S.A. (ESSA), the development company in which the Mexican government has 51% ownership with Mitsubishi, anticipated an annual net revenue of $25 million from the salt plant.

The project's initial environmental impact assessment was rejected by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Ecologia (INE). A new environmental impact assessment was ordered in 1995, and a scientific advisory committee that included seven distinguished scientists--two from California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography--was established to oversee the process and evaluate the final report. The 3,500-page environmental impact statement was released just prior to President Zedillo's announcement on March 2.

Instrumental in publicizing the proposed fate of San Ignacio Lagoon was the Group of 100, a group of Mexico's most influential artists, writers and environmentalists including Carlos Fuentes and Homero Aridjis, as well as other prominent intellectuals such as Gunter Grass, Peter Matthiessen, Roger Payne, David Brower, Lester Brown, Gary Snyder, and Tom Hayden. International conservation organizations (including the American Cetacean Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, Earth Island Institute, World WildlifeFund-Mexico, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the California Coastal Commission, among countless others) and celebrities (including Robert Kennedy Jr., Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, and Jean-Michel Cousteau) called attention to the plight of the Lagoon and impact on the gray whale nursery.

The resulting pressure, including over 1 million letters and boycotting of Mitsubishi products, gave Mexico's INE and Green Party substantial clout to stop the saltworks against considerable political and economic opposition. Local fishermen and residents of San Ignacio also were also against the project, as were 75% of Japanese polled in a recent Greenpeace survey.

The victory in San Ignacio Lagoon demonstrates that the environment is a global issue, and that everyone working together can make a difference.