Green Airport Arouses Skepticism in Mexico
CHIMALHUACÁN, Mexico — On the basin that was once the Aztecs’ great Lake Texcoco, Mexico is building its “door to the world,” a huge airport the government vows will exist in harmony with the environment.
Officials described a terminal design so green that it would be a “global reference” for sustainability, and they pledged to rescue degraded lands around the Mexico City airport.
But soon after construction started in 2015, the government appeared to turn its back on part of that promise, ceding 200 hectares of land designated for conservation to the city government of Chimalhuacán for development. A polytechnic university is rising, and soccer fields for a sports center have been marked out. An industrial park is on the drawing boards.
And as construction moves ahead, Mexico’s grandest infrastructure project in decades, the much-heralded environmental protection effort is still so devoid of detail, critics say, that it raises questions of credibility and actually obscures the risk of flooding.
Centuries- old mistakes concerning land and water management are likely to be repeated, said Fernando Córdova Tapia, an analyst at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Handing over the 200 hectares was “the first symptom of how they are betraying the entire environmental mitigation effort,” he said.
A study led by Mr. Córdova also warned that salt cedar, the main species in the reforesting effort, is not native to Mexico and is so invasive that it could damage the ecosystem.
Lake Texcoco, where the Aztecs built their island capital, Tenochtitlán, once captured the rainwater hurtling down the surrounding hillsides. But Spanish conquerors drained the lake and cleared forest- land, setting off centuries of flooding and water-management crises. With no natural source of water to filter back into the aquifer below, the lake bed itself is sinking. “We inherited the war the Spanish waged against water and therefore the lack of wisdom on how to coexist with it in a sustainable manner,” Mr. Córdova said.
The government’s plan calls for channels, tunnels and five new reservoirs to collect runoff that drains into the area. Octavio Mayén Mena, a government spokesman, said reforestation is underway, and the National Water Commission said construction of the reservoirs will begin next year.
The airport reflects President Enrique Peña Nieto’s aspirations of turning Mexico City into a travel hub for the Americas.
The British architect Norman Foster has designed a soaring steel and glass airport terminal. Scheduled to open in 2020 and serve 50 million passengers a year, the airport will relieve congestion at the capital’s Benito Juárez International Airport.
Mexico’s National Water Commission approved the transfer of the 200 hectares, saying the area had never been included in the original flood control project. But the water commission’s former director called the land transfer “outrageous” and said the area had indeed been assigned to the reservoir system. “You can’t build anything there; there is a very high risk,” said the former director, José Luis Luege, a member of the opposition National Action Party.