Mexican officials are reviving plans for a deep-water shipping port that could include a rail line through the southwestern Arizona city of Yuma to serve it.
The shipping port would be located on the Baja California coast south of Ensenada.
When the project first became public in 2007, it raised concerns in the Yuma area that it could disrupt local farming and roads and create pollution.
The project came to a halt because of the global economic downturn, but Mexico's Ministry of Communications and Transportation published new bidding specifications this week for companies seeking to build and operate the port and the rail line that would move cargo shipped in from other nations.
The ministry's announcement resurrects one of the proposed routes that would bring the rail line up from Punta Colonet through the Ensenada area, up through San Felipe, Baja Calif., then east to San Luis Rio Colorado in Sonora, where it would turn and cross the border east of Yuma on the way to the United States.
All well and good, unless port management is turned over to Hutchinson-Whampoa, which is in tight with the Chinese PLA. Remember how Al Gore wanted to lease them the port at Long Beach? Maybe Ensenada is "Plan 'B'". It would not be good to have possible Chinese missiles only 70 miles from the US fleet at San Diego. |