Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) thanked Congress late last month for “approving and improving” the first environmental reform package in the year-old administration of President Vicente Fox. Last-minute changes to the administration’s bills, made by the lower house’s Ecology Commission at the urging of non-governmental organizations, resulted in, among other things, a requirement for periodic public disclosure of toxic industrial emissions—chemical-by-chemical, site-by-site. This reform of the General Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection Law (LGEEPA) responds to the federal government’s commitment under the environmental side-accord of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) to institute a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) comparable to those in effect in the United States and Canada. After the... [Log in to read more]