Mexico City dump, Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico (William Widmer). 

By Mica Rosenberg NEZAHUALCOYOTL, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico City is facing a crisis over where to put its trash — enough to fill four sports stadiums a year — with its sprawling dump already crammed to bursting and under a closure order. One of the world’s biggest landfills, the Nezahualcoyotl dump site is a fifth the size of Manhattan and sits inside the urban sprawl of the fast-growing Mexican capital. Mexico City is built on a dried-out lake bed first settled by the ancient Aztecs and grew at such a frenetic pace in the 1980s and 1990s that it now envelopes outlying villages, the dump and the international airport. Now, mountains of refuse piled several stories high are pressing against a major drainage canal that runs along the dump’s edge. That risks a rupture that could flood residential areas and the airport with stinking effluent and grime, says the federal government which ordered the dump closed in January. But city officials are stalling in court, arguing that the danger is exaggerated and asking for more time to implement ambitious recycling and green energy projects. "If the canal breaks it would be a disaster, you would have thousands of people inundated with sewage," said Mauricio Limon, an official at the Environment Ministry, which has been trying to close down the landfill for years. "More time in operation means more polluting methane … tainted aquifers, more contamination of the surrounding areas, damaged wildlife and bad odors," Limon said.

Garbage disaster looms at giant Mexico City dump

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