US company rejects Mexico's criticism, buy-out offer, says president's projects hurt the environment
The Mexican president offered to buy its property on the Caribbean coast.
MEXICO CITY — An American quarry company on Monday rejected the Mexican president's campaign of criticisms and closures, as well as his offer to buy its property on the Caribbean coast.
In July, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered to buy the American company’s Caribbean coast property for about $385 million amid a bitter, years-long dispute.
Alabama-based Vulcan Materials said in a statement Monday that offer “substantially undervalues our assets.”
In papers filed on the case in an international arbitration panel, Vulcan Materials valued the almost 6,000-acre (2,400 hectare) property, located just south of the resort town of Playa del Carmen, at $1.9 billion.
The Mexican president has in the past threatened to expropriate the extensive property, claiming the pits it has dug to extract crushed limestone have damaged the fragile system of underground rivers and caves in the area.
But Vulcan Materials rejected the charge. “Our operations have not adversely 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 some other quarries in the area have been operating unlawfully. “Unlike other quarrying sites that have been operating unlawfully 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 archeologist say the project has damaged the caves, which hold some of the oldest human remains in North America.
The president's office had no
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