(23 Oct 2001)
23 October 2001
1. City worker being detained
2. Wide shot of protesters
3. Protesters shouting
4. Line of police with shields
5. Close up of police
6. Various of burning tyres
7. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Lorenzo Moreno Velazquez, protester
"What we are doing is to destroy the future of all our children. We definitely don't want the airport here"
8. Wide shot of city worker being arrested
9. Various shots of men with wooden sticks and machetes
10. Wide shot of news conference
11. Cutaway of camera
12. Wide shot of news conference
13. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Pedro Cerisola, Transportation Secretary
"For a better service in all our flight operations and personnel, we consider that Texcoco is the proper area to build a new and integrated terminal, to eliminate the loss of flight connections and eliminate a large number of flight cancellations."
File
14. Various shots at Benito Juarez airport
15. Various shots of Texcoco area
STORYLINE:
Angry protests in Mexico have followed an announcement that the country's new main airport will be built on a soggy former lake bed east of Mexico City.
The announcement by Federal officials on Monday has set off a sparked a new political crisis with the city government.
Federal Communications and Transportation Secretary, Pedro Cerisola, said the new six runway airport at Texcoco, 14 miles (23 kilometres) east of Mexico City, would cost almost 21 (B) billion pesos (2-point-3 (B) billion U-S dollars) and that the first stage should open before President Vicente Fox leaves office in 2006.
Texcoco won a months-long battle against Tizayuca, a city in Hidalgo state about 50 miles (80 kilometres) north of the capital to have the new airport built there.
Cerisola said the Texcoco plan was about 40 percent cheaper and technically more feasible than the Tizayuca project.
City officials said the Texcoco airport would concrete over an area crucial for regulating floodwaters in the city.
It would also disrupt migrating birds that stop at the salty waters of nearby lakes.
But Cerisola said Fox already has signed expropriation orders for some 4-thousand 500 hectares (about 11-thousand 100 acres).
The current airport on the eastern edge of the city was founded in 1910.
It is bordered on three sides by dense urban development, which has restricted expansion.
Only one runway can be used at a time.
The 21 (M) million passengers and 280-thousand flights recorded last year strained its capacity.
The planned Texcoco airport would be able to handle about 90 (M) million passengers and three of its six runways could be used simultaneously.
It would be privately owned under various concessions for hotels, terminals and other operations, Cerisola said.
About 75 percent of the financing would be private.
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