The current head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, publicly declared the damage to cenotes and caverns that various environmentalists have long sought to prevent during the construction of Section 5 of this project. This statement came after weekly meetings were held to review permits and progress on this new form of transportation.
Environmental damage was not the only topic discussed, as she also admitted that the project, which began during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, does not have all the necessary permits.
Every week, discussions and analyses are held to monitor the construction process of the Mayan Train. In response, the secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) declared before an inter-institutional group that the current work on Section 5 of this project has affected cenotes and caverns.
“We arrived on October 1, 2024, and the Maya Train was already there. Therefore, it’s not like we can say we don’t want the Maya Train; it’s there (…) Yes, we are very aware that in Section 5, above all, there has been an impact on the eight caverns and cenotes located there.
According to the same statements by Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, the project still does not have sufficient permits, so Semarnat itself is still in charge of pursuing and regularizing the necessary paperwork that they definitely had to obtain before its implementation in Quintana Roo.
“What we have done is evaluate all the permits that the Maya Train has, those it has and those it doesn’t have, so that it can be regularized. Regularizing the project also means imposing a series of conditions (…) We are working, on the one hand, to regularize the works that have been completed in terms of environmental impact, 45% related to land use change, and to propose, achieve, and pressure for compliance with 95% of the environmental impact conditions.”
This group, made up of Semarnat (National Seminary of Tourism), Profepa (Profepa), and the National Fund for Tourism Development (Fonatur), meets weekly to discuss updates on the construction process of the Mayan Train. For now, they have focused on the construction of Section 5. Among the topics discussed were:
Reforestation areas needed to offset the ecological impact.
Cleanup measures and concrete removal in areas with affected cenotes and caverns.
Pending permits and unfulfilled environmental conditions.
Source: marca
