Mayan Train drilling damages Mexico's ancient caves
STORY: According to environmentalist Elias Siebendorn, the construction of the huge railway project threatens fragile ecosystems.
"They are riddling the cave, putting substances like oil into the water, and we don't even know what else they are putting into the water. This directly affects the water and the aquifer where we live."
"What is dumped here in the cave through that borehole will reach other caves and also the sea because all the water flows into the sea, and there it directly impacts the reef."
On Friday (March 22) demonstrators protested and blocked one of the main access roads to the touristic town of Playa del Carmen to demand that the railway construction works comply with environmental laws and stop pollution in the largest water reserve of the Yucatan peninsula.
The "Tren Maya" is one of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's flagship infrastructure projects, which he says will bring significant economic benefits to long impoverished rural communities in Mexico's southeast.
But environmentalists have long raised concerns about the train's construction, which cuts through some of the world's most unique ecosystems, including a system of thousands of subterranean caves carved out from the region's soft limestone bedrock by water over millions of years.
