US company rejects Mexico’s criticism, buy-out offer, says president’s projects hurt the environment

MEXICO CITY — An American quarry company rejected this Monday the Mexican president’s campaign of criticism and closures, as well as his offer to buy his property on the Caribbean coast.

In July, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered to buy the American company’s property on the Caribbean coast for about $385 million amid a bitter dispute that lasted years.

Alabama-based Vulcan Materials said in a statement Monday that the offer “substantially undervalues ​​our assets.”

In documents filed about the case before an international arbitration panel, Vulcan Materials valued the nearly 6,000-acre (2,400-hectare) property, located just south of the resort city of Playa del Carmen, at $1.9 billion.

The Mexican president has in the past threatened to expropriate the sprawling property, claiming that the wells he has dug to extract crushed limestone have damaged the area’s fragile system of underground rivers and caves.

But Vulcan Materials rejected the accusation. “Our operations have not negatively affected underground caves, cenotes or archaeological sites. In fact, we have mapped, protected and preserved these valuable resources,” the company said in a statement.

Instead, the company alleged that other quarries in the area had been operating illegally. “Unlike other quarries that have been operating illegally to supply the Mayan Train, our operations were duly permitted,” the company said.

The Mayan Train is a pet project of López Obrador to build a tourist train around the Yucatan Peninsula. Activists, cave divers and archaeologists say the project has damaged the caves, which house some of the oldest human remains in North America.

The president’s office had no immediate reaction to Vulcan’s allegations.

López Obrador has said in the past that the most attractive part of the property was the company’s loading dock, the only deep port on the mainland coast, which he plans to convert into a cruise ship dock. He says he wants to turn the rest of the property into a nature preserve.

“The Mexican government is using these political threats and false accusations to try to justify converting our property into a “naturally protected area,” which could, ironically, be used not to protect the environment but for the purposes of commercial tourism and naval operations. , including cruises. ship activity,” the company said.

López Obrador said he also wants to use the flooded wells the company dug in hundreds of acres of limestone soil as “swimming pools” or an “ecotourism” area that would be operated as a concession by a private operator.

The huge pits are inhabited by crocodiles, which are a protected species in Mexico.

The company’s dock in Punta Venado is the only one in the area that can handle cement, crushed stone and other shipments for the Mayan Train. The 1,500-kilometer (950-mile) Mayan Train line is designed to travel through the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting beach resorts and archaeological sites.

López Obrador promotes the train as a way to bring part of Cancún’s tourism revenue to inland communities that have not shared that wealth. But there are no credible feasibility studies showing that tourists would want to use the train.