Cancun, QRoo.- In just one month and four days, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) approved the Environmental Impact Statement (MINE) of section 5 south of the Mayan Trainwhich runs from Playa del Carmen to Tulum.
According to the Semarnat Ecological Gazette, the document of more than 6,000 sheets —which contains the characterization of the area that will impact the road, as well as the risks to the environment— was entered for evaluation only on May 17 last and was approved on June 21just four days after the conclusion of the public consultation that received hundreds of accusations about inconsistencies, inconsistencies and lack of technical information about the impact that the train will have in an area where underground rivers, caverns and cenotes abound.
This is a record time, coincidentally adjusted to the times of the parallel judicial process that the project faces, since said approval was presented yesterday on the date set for the constitutional hearing of amparo 884/2022 that keeps the works stopped since last May 18.
The National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) yesterday presented the approved MIA before Judge Adrián Fernando Novelo Pérez, head of the First District Court in Yucatán, to request that the definitive suspension of the works be discarded, since the environmental impact authorization was already obtained. Given this, the hearing was postponed until July 28 of this year.
Environmental groups based the injunctions against section 5 southprecisely in the absence of this authorization, which should have been processed before the clearing of the jungle to the west of Playa del Carmen was carried out, whose images have been widely disseminated in the media and social networks.
Fonatur’s own spokesman, Fernando Vázquez Rosas, had already announced that they are very confident that with the approval of the MIA by Semarnat, the protections that keep the progress in the construction of this section stopped will be discarded.
The official assured that the Mayan Train is endorsed by a provisional authorization granted by Semarnat, as well as by the agreement signed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that makes this, and other federal projects, works of public interest and national security, what which allowed them to start works in advance before processing the environmental impact authorization.
Judge Novelo Pérez determined yesterday that next July 1 the review appeal against the suspension of the works granted to the protection 884/2022by virtue of the environmental impact authorization presented by Fonatur.