As El Paso Doctor Elaine Barron reminded the audience, what we produce, what we consume, what we discard, and what makes us sick are all ultimately connected. Speaking in Sunland Park, New Mexico, before an August meeting of the Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality (JAC), a binational US-Mexico organization that advises environmental policy-makers on issues of concern in the Paso del Norte region, Dr. Barron sketched the links between toxins like arsenic and diseases such as diabetes. She emphasized how air pollution, for example, can trigger respiratory disorders in children.

“I see it everyday,” said the borderland physician, adding she notices a rise in children with irritated eyes visiting her hospital during the border city’s Ozone Action Days.

In rapid-fire sequence, Dr. Barron laid out the possible environmental health consequences of mounting pollution. Citing a recent study of 11.7 million cases of seven chronic diseases in Texas in 2003, Dr. Barron said the economic toll topped more than $92.5 billion in losses from worker absenteeism and other impacts. If present disease trends continue, she warned, the economic costs to the state could reach $242 billion in 2023.

A major issue, Dr. Barron said, is the assault on public health from the combined effects of pollutants we live with every day-dust, chemicals, heavy metals and the like. Complicating the panorama, she added, are matters of life-style, genetics, topography, temperature, and climate change.

Dr. Barron urged decision makers to take a second look at utilizing cumulative risk assessment studies, a policy framework considered by the Clinton administration but abandoned in recent years, according to the environmental health advocate.

“Public health should be touched by politics,” Dr. Barron contended.

JAC co-chair, William Luthans, an official with Region 6 of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, agreed that modern times present tricky scenarios for environmental policy-makers who confront problems that can’t always be pegged into a simple square. That’s why the federal agency regards PM 2.5, for instance, as not a single pollutant but as a whole class of contaminants. “That’s the nature of the challenge we face,” Luthans said.

In the growing, cross-border Paso del Norte region, environmental challenges run a broad gamut from air pollution to clean water to toxic waste clean-up and more.

In Ciudad Juarez, a new organization made up of private businesses, environmental advocates and government officials, Ciudad Juarez Pro-Aire has emerged with a new proposal to help make the Mexican city’s air cleaner. At the JAC meeting, a representative of Baker & McKenzie, an international law firm active on climate change and other issues in 70 nations, unveiled the proposal on behalf of the Ciudad Juarez group.

Denisse Varela, a Ciudad Juarez attorney for Baker&McKenzie, said a major goal of Ciudad Juarez Pro-Aire is to set up an environmental trust fund that will provide money for a cleaner air basin. According to a Juarez Pro-Aire document distributed at the Sunland Park meeting, financing for the fund could come in part from a new tax on gasoline and diesel approved by the Mexican Congress in September 2007. A small portion of the proceeds is earmarked for the Federal District and the states. According to Ciudad Juarez Pro-Aire, other sources of funding could flow from State of Chihuahua and municipal coffers.

Ciudad Juarez Pro-Aire seeks funding for cleaner taxis and buses, better air conditioning systems, vehicle upgrades, and renewable energy sources for maquiladora plants. The current, polluting urban transportation system results in “reductions in the quality of life of the inhabitants of Ciudad Juarez,” the group notes.

In an interview with Frontera NorteSur, Varela said Ciudad Juarez Pro-Aire is shooting for the signing of a collaborative agreement among the municipal, state and federal governments before the year ends. The next key step would be the creation of the trust fund, which is expected to be administered by a private bank. Varela said details about contracts, commissions and fees still need to be worked out, but trust fund proponents want loans kept in the three or five percent interest rate
range- a figure far below what Mexican banks currently charge. Until now, no exact amount of how much money the trust fund will raise and disburse has been determined, Varela added.

“Unfortunately, the quantity that we are seeking for the trust fund might not resolve the problems 100 percent,” Varela said, “but it could be a good catalyst for a good percentage of these (environmental) problems to be tackled.”

In an important statement, the JAC took on the controversy over the mothballed Asarco smelter in El Paso. Responding to widespread public concerns, the JAC passed a resolution by a vote of 18-0 that calls on the co-chairs of the US Border 2012 Program Air Policy forum to encourage federal and state governments with jurisdictional authority over the old Asarco plant to take actions in favor of public health and the environment. Abstaining from the vote were the Texas Commission in Environmental Quality and the City of El Paso, both of which have pending legal issues with Asarco, and a representative of private industry.

The JAC recommended that regulators review air quality permit activities; assess whether legacy issues of lead, arsenic and other contamination pose continued environmental hazards; determine if a partial or full clean-up of the smelter site is warranted; and assure public oversight of air pollution emissions as well as air quality monitors the smelter will need to operate if it reopens. In the interest of public transparency, the JAC endorsed the creation of a binational Asarco citizen’s advisory committee to oversee the smelter’s operations.

Although the TCEQ granted Asarco a five-year air quality permit earlier this year, uncertainty prevails over whether the plant will actually reopen and begin smelting copper again. Asarco’s proposed sale for $2.6 billion to Sterlite Industries, a subsidiary of the London-based Vedanta Resources company associated with Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, was publicly announced last May.

Curiously, the deal did not include the El Paso property, which stayed in the hands of longtime owner Grupo Mexico. During the recent battle over corporate control of Asarco, Grupo Mexico said it did not intend to reopen its El Paso facility and would work with US officials to clean up the property. A bankruptcy judge now is weighing the offers for the Asarco.

Commenting on Asarco’s smelting of military and other wastes in El Paso during the 1990s, the JAC recognized that “trust in future operations has been undermined by past findings of illegal hazardous waste processing and legacy effects of previous facility operations.”

Attending the meeting, Sierra Club activist Bill Guerra-Addington urged the JAC to stay on top of the hazardous waste issue, which local environmentalists are still trying to get to the bottom of after many years. “It needs to be acknowledged by every one of you what happened with Asarco,” Guerra-Addington said.

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Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

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