During test runs of equipment in the still idle power plant, residents say, the noise reached more than 110 decibels, as loud as a jet engine at takeoff and 50% above levels considered tolerable for the average human pain threshold.
People say they experienced intense headaches, children vomited and some residents suffered hearing loss.
“We didn’t want the thermoelectric plant. They imposed it on us,” said Teresa Castellanos, a lifelong resident of Huexca who has fought since 2012 against the government project.
Huexca means “place of happiness” in the indigenous Nahuatl language, but the town of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants has become a place of discord. Some people want the plant put into operation. Others are vehemently against it, saying it will destroy their rural life and possibly force them to abandon the only land they have ever known.
The power plant is part of a mega-energy project that includes a natural gas pipeline that traverses three states. It’s at the heart of a yearslong, contentious battle, and is now raising questions among some people about the commitments of the new leftist government to indigenous land rights.
Dozens of mostly indigenous communities along the nearly 100 miles of pipeline have united to fight the project, which they believe will deprive them of water for their crops and contaminate the soil and air.
Hundreds of environmentalists marched in Mexico City last week to show their discontent with the government’s big infrastructure plans.
In addition to the mega-energy project, those plans include a tourist train through Mayan lands and a cargo rail line in the south that activists say put business interests ahead of the wishes of indigenous communities, while endangering flora and fauna.
The power project has advanced in fits and starts for more than a decade. It’s essentially complete, but legal stays and blockades by locals have prevented connection of the last few hundred feet of pipeline needed to fire up the power plant.
In the town of San Pedro Apatlaco, men from villages along the pipeline route take turns sleeping under a tarp on the banks of the Cuautla River to make sure the final tubes aren’t laid down.
Those pipes would carry water between the thermoelectric plant and a water treatment facility. The men have camped there for over three years, next to abandoned tubes.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office Dec. 1, 2018, wants the stalled project up and running. Scrapping it would cost the country more than $1 billion, he says.
“That is money from the budget, money of the people,” Lopez Obrador said.
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