Last Gray Whale Sanctuary in Danger.

Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico Mitsubishi International Corporation and the Mexican government are poised to build the world's largest salt factory in the last pristine gray whale sanctuary off the North American continent.

Every year between December and March, hundreds of forty-ton whales migrate 5,000 miles from Alaska to Baja California's Laguna San Ignacio to mate and give birth to their young. "The whales and their environment are going to suffer disastrous effects if this saltworks factory is built," says Jacob Scheft, director of the international program for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Exportadora de Sal, the company co-owned by Mitsubishi and Mexico, plans to put its factory--which, at 116 square miles, is twice the size of the District of Columbia--on the shore of the lagoon. On March 10, a coalition of environmental groups filed a complaint against the company.

The environmentalists say that 6,000 gallons of water would be pumped out of the lagoon each second, which would adversely affect the water's temperature, level, and salinity.

Such an immense factory could also generate a billion gallons of waste over the course of one year with high concentrations of magnesium bromides and other chemicals, the environmentalists say. And they oppose the company's proposal to build a mile-long pier for supertankers, which would lie directly in the whales' migration path.

For more information, contact the Natural Resources Defense Council, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005. Call [phone], or visit www.nrdc.org.