A limestone quarry owned by the Alabama-based company Vulcan Materials caused an “ecological disaster” in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and the company must restore the site, Environment Minister Alicia Bárcena said on Friday.

Mexico’s Environment Ministry (Semarnat) claims that operations at a limestone quarry managed by a subsidiary of Vulcan Materials destroyed three cenotes before the property was seized by Mexican authorities.

Last week, Bárcena — previously Mexico’s Foreign Affairs minister — defended a Sept. 23 presidential decree declaring a 50,000-hectare stretch of land in the state of Quintana Roo part of a protected natural reserve. This vast tract, which stretches from Playa del Carmen to Tulum, includes a mine and a marine port operated by Vulcan subsidiary Sac-Tun, formerly known as Calizas Industriales del Carmen (Calica).

Speaking during President Sheinbaum’s Friday morning press conference, Bárcena said the now-shuttered quarry operations “completely destroyed” three cenotes — natural sinkholes that are the primary source of water in the region.

The company also violated their mining permits, extracting more limestone than allowed and discharging water with higher-than-permitted levels of pollutants, Bárcena said, citing an investigation by the Federal Attorney’s Office of Environmental Protection (Profepa).

According to the newspaper El Economista, Bárcena claimed that the company’s quarrying permits had expired in 2020 and it did not have all the necessary water-use permits. She also accused Calica of falsely claiming to have concessions to operate in designated archaeological zones.

Vulcan — which has been operating in Mexico since 1986 — announced it would fight the expropriation, but Bárcena said the decree was not an expropriation. “The land still belongs to [Calica],” she said on Friday. “The only thing we are saying is they can not extract one more gram of limestone.”

Bárcena also said the decree requires Calica to repair the damage done to the landscape and possibly reforest the property.

The conversion of the region into a protected natural reserve was the latest salvo in a long-running battle dating back three years. 

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued the decree during the final week of his six-year term.

For years, López Obrador criticized Vulcan’s activities as “ecocidal.” He finally ordered Vulcan’s Calica unit to halt the quarrying of the limestone — which was primarily exported to the United States for road-building purposes — two years ago. 

In March 2023, Mexican Navy personnel seized the company’s port to allow the Mexican company Cemex to unload a shipment of cement. 

With reports from El Financiero, Milenio and El Economista