Judge orders Profepa to close Cholula garbage dump

PUEBLA (apro).- A federal judge ordered the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) to replace the closure seals on the Cholula garbage dump, which is presumed to be the property of the now senator-elect for Morena and former Semarnat official, Cuauhtémoc Ochoa Fernández.

The members of the Union of Towns and Subdivisions against the Garbage and in Defense of Water reported that, according to a protection they promoted, Profepa should not have withdrawn on April 30 the closure that it had imposed on this landfill at the beginning of that same year. month, since it did so without the company Pro-Faj Hidrolimpieza complying with the conditions that the same agency imposed on it.

Defender Alejandro Torres Chocolatl reported that despite irregularities and violation of the rules that this garbage dump must comply with, citizens who oppose its reopening and have held a sit-in at its doors since last March are harassed and threatened with A judicial process will be filed against them.

He said that they held Ochoa Fernández responsible for anything that might happen, because last week when Profepa went to carry out a study at the landfill, they found that there were armed people inside.

“And they say that they have already armed themselves because the defenders want to burn the garbage dump and what they want is to criminalize… they are capable of anything, as long as they return (to operate). “We hold Cuauhtémoc Ochoa, who has just won the senatorship for Hidalgo, responsible if they arrest the defenders or if something happens to them,” he added.

He mentioned that in recent days they have even suffered cyber attacks with the cloning of the organization’s pages and community media that have documented this fight.

A representative of the Union of Street Vendors 28 de Octubre mentioned that residents of the surrounding subdivisions have reported cases of children with leukemia that could be related to the pollution generated by this confinement.

Juan Carlos Solís, lawyer for the activists, explained that the judge granted the provisional suspension, which consists of Profepa re-placing the closure seals, if the corrective measures requested of the company have not been fulfilled or if it is confirmed that The macrocell of this fill has already concluded its useful life.

According to information obtained through transparency, Solís indicated that this landfill has ended its useful life since 2019 and that it currently covers almost two hectares more than those authorized by the Secretary of the Environment, Sustainable Development and Territorial Planning (SMADSOT). from Puebla.

And he recalled that this movement that demands the definitive closure of this landfill, when they realized that the company Pro Faj Hidrolimpieza began the excavation of a 2.7 hectare sinkhole to expand even though it does not meet the characteristics of a sanitary landfill.

In principle, they pointed out that since 2017, the lagoon to which the leachate would be directed, according to the original project, was covered with garbage, which meant that the collection of these liquids, which was supposed to be carried out through a network of pipes, disappeared. underground.

He added that in the visit that Profepa made in February 2024, it was able to confirm that the leachate is being poured into the ground without protection and in the layers of soil that were exposed when the company excavated the sinkhole, it is observed that the soil is filtered by those wastes.

“Approximately eight meters deep from the surface you begin to observe the wet and smelly earth, the path begins to be swampy with small puddles of leachate that boil and form when walking. The land is becoming contaminated and is increasingly moving towards the aquifers,” he warned.

He added that since an inspection carried out by SMADSOT in 2019, it was noted that this confinement did not have adequate storm drainage and that until 2024, when Profepa carried out its visit, observations were made in that same sense, in addition to detecting that It does not have infrastructure for capturing and disposing of biogas.