Mahahual Landfill Overflows, Spilling Trash Onto the Cafetal-Mahahual Highway

Mahahual, Quintana Roo — The municipal dump in this coastal community has surpassed its capacity, and garbage is now spilling onto the shoulders of the Cafetal-Mahahual highway, a road used daily by tourists and residents, activist Víctor Rosales said Thursday.

Rosales raised the alarm after a beach cleanup carried out with students from the Colegio de Bachilleres de Mahahual. When the group arrived at the site to drop off the waste they had collected, they found mounds of garbage already pushing past the property line and creeping toward the edge of the roadway.

According to Rosales, the situation was reported to the municipal government about a month ago, but no visible response has followed.

“The waste is already reaching the highway, which is deeply sad,” he said, noting that tourists who pass through the area every day can see the deterioration.

The activist argued the case points to a deeper failure in solid waste management.

“Garbage doesn’t disappear, it just changes location,” he said, referring to how debris collected from beaches and streets ends up at a disposal site that can no longer keep up.

Residents have repeated their complaints for weeks, according to accounts gathered at the site, but the problem persists and worsens as the days pass. The buildup damages the image of a destination that depends heavily on tourism and also poses an environmental risk, since the waste is scattering into vegetation close to the coast.

Rosales called on environmental and municipal authorities to step in immediately, clear the stretch of highway occupied by the debris and address the municipal landfill crisis as a whole.