baja sur - 2-15-2007 at 06:19 PM
Big plans for Colonet port run aground
By Diane Lindquist
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 10, 2007
A Baja California legislative panel has publicly rejected plans for the development of a megaport at Colonet, saying state government officials have
failed to live up to promises to provide details of the massive project.
In a meeting in Mexicali on Thursday, Carlos Enrique Jiménez Ruiz, head of the state legislature's managing commission, announced opposition to the
project because so little is known, according to Mexican media outlets.
Neither Jiménez Ruiz nor a representative of Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther could be reached for comment yesterday.
Jesús Lara, the leader of several ejido cooperative farm groups from the Colonet region south of Ensenada where the project is planned, was present at
the announcement and confirmed the legislative panel's opposition.
“The legislature asked the state government to inform them about every detail of the project five months ago,” Lara said. “Elorduy and his people
never got back to them.”
Although the Colonet port development is under the authority of the federal government, officials in Mexico City have asked the Baja California
legislature to give its approval for the megaport 150 miles south of San Diego. The state government is responsible for creating a master plan for a
port community that is expected to have as many as 250,000 residents.
“There's confusion among the public and the three levels of government,” Lara said. “It sounds like this action would have a big impact, but in my
opinion it would not.”
Lara said a business group, Grupo Minero Lobos, which holds mineral rights in the ocean bed off Punta Colonet, urged the legislative opposition.
The group has been negotiating with federal officials to gain a portion of the port project, which is to be bid out to private enterprises that will
develop and operate the port and a rail line to send container cargo from Asia to the American heartland.
The port is expected to cost as much as $9 billion and be as large as the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach combined.
“That's a totally private group of only four or five people,” Lara said of the mineral rights group. “They're trying to create a controversy. I've
been meeting with them and I'm learning things, but it's time to resolve this issue.”
Although federal officials have begun courting global port and rail development companies and state officials reportedly have drawn a master plan,
little information has seeped into the public domain.
At a global shipping conference in Acapulco in late November, Mexican port director Angel González Rul said the project will be bid in the third
quarter of this year.
But earlier this week in Tijuana, Baja California economic development secretary Sergio Tagliaprietra said the bidding would begin within two months.
The ejido farmers, who own the land where the port and the new city are to be built, are being kept mostly in the dark, Lara said.
Two months after Elorduy said he was willing to work with the farmers and explain the procedure to them, Lara sent a letter seeking information about
the project and the state's master plan.
“I told him, 'I don't know who is telling you we're being informed because we're not,' ” Lara said.
He said the Colonet farmers favor the project, but they want assurances that they are not going to be taken advantage of.
“We want to tell all three levels of government that we agree with the port and, for the private investors, there's no problem with the landowners,”
Lara said.