Mexico's Yucatan tourist train sinks pilings into relic-filled limestone caves, activists show

Source: Associated Press

Mexico’s Yucatan tourist train sinks pilings into relic-filled limestone caves, activists show

Updated 1:33 PM EST, January 23, 2024

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Activists in Mexico have published photos of steel and cement pilings from a government project that were driven directly through the roofs of sensitive limestone caves on the Yucatan peninsula.

The network of caves, sinkhole lakes and underground rivers along Mexico’s Caribbean coast are both environmentally sensitive and have been found to hold some of the oldest human remains in North America.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had promised that part of his controversial $20 billion tourist train project, known as the Maya Train, would run on an elevated causeway supported by pilings to avoid crushing or disturbing the caves and sinkhole lakes known as cenotes.

They provide the region’s only fresh water source, because there are no surface rivers on the flat, limestone peninsula.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/mexico-maya-train-tourist-rail-yucatan-environment-caves-cenotes-e8d7141bfa015f370daec04be2f2c4a1