Calica Denied Explosives Storage in Playa del Carmen

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — Magistrates of the Superior Chamber of the Federal Court of Administrative Justice (TFJA) have declared inadmissible a claim by Calica through which it sought to use more than 10,000 tons of high-impact explosives for its private purposes, following the withdrawal of the stone material extraction concession in Playa del Carmen.

In a ruling issued on January 14, magistrates in Mexico City declared inadmissible Calica’s lawsuit filed since 2022 against the refusal issued by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), which in October of that year denied renewal of the permit for storage and use of high-impact explosive material.

According to the ruling consulted by Sol Quintana Roo, with case file number 965/22-20-01-2/1406/24-PL-08-04 of administrative contentious proceedings, the U.S. subsidiary of Vulcan Materials Company sought to continue storing this type of material in its domains in southern Playa del Carmen.

It was precisely in May 2022 when the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa) definitively shut down the extraction of stone material in approximately two thousand hectares of its property.

Despite this, the foreign company requested a license to continue with storage, including enormous quantities of explosive material such as bulk ammonium nitrate emulsion, explosive agent, detonating cords, conductors, initiators, high-pressure boosters, and ammonium nitrate: all these, detonating agents and elements to achieve explosion.

The Sedena, instead of renewing the permit, as read in the ruling, delivered a notice informing that requirements were missing.

Faced with this, Calica initiated a nullity trial in the Quintana Roo and Caribbean Chamber of the aforementioned administrative jurisdictional body.

In the end, the magistrates of the Superior Chamber confirmed that Calica cannot use these explosives again, but because its lawyers made a poor argument in the lawsuit, whose ruling can still be challenged through a direct amparo.