Mitsubishi mayhem.

The serene lagoon waters of Mexico's Baja peninsula are gearing up for a heated battle between environmentalists, the Mitsubishi Corporation  and the Mexican government. Once a part of California, Baja's salty and buoyant waters are considered prime calving and nursing territory for gray whales, whose recent recovery (they were removed from the Endangered Species List in 1994) is being threatened by encroaching development.

The announcement by Mitsubishi and Mexico to open the world's largest salt mine at San Ignacio Lagoon has sparked a vocal protest, but has powerful allies. At issue are the incomplete environmental assessment (which biologists claim ignores the plight of the whales), and the $100 million in projected revenue to be siphoned through the Compania Exportadora de Sal, owned jointly by the Mexican government (51 percent) and Mitsubishi (49 percent).

Hunted for their oil and meat until just a few hundred remained in the 1940s, gray whales number over 21,000 today. Every winter, approximately 20,000 California gray whales swim 4,000 miles from Alaska's Bering Strait to Baja - most stopping near San Ignacio.

The proposed facility, covering 92 square miles, would include a mile-long steel pier, loading facilities for cargo ships and two pumping stations - pumping 6,000 gallons of saltwater per second out of San Ignacio lagoon onto dry lake beds where, after evaporation, the salt would be harvested and exported for industrial uses.

Mitsubishi currently oversees a 120-squaremile salt mine at Guerrero Negro Lagoon, and wants to expand to San Ignacio, despite the area's protected status under a 1988 designation of the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve. According to International Coordinator Betty Ferber of Grupo de los Cien, Mexico's most influential environmental organization, the consortium "already chums out six million tons of salt annually at its 43-year-old saltworks at Ojo de Liebre and Guerrero Negro, two other gray whale nurseries 100 miles north." She also says the whales have abandoned the lagoons as a consequence of their repeated dredging. "And locals against the project are afraid to speak out. Places like Guerrero Negro are company-controlled towns. When people complain about the saltworks, they pay for it," Ferber adds.

Mitsubishi spokesperson Steve Wechselblatt says the number of whales visiting developed lagoons has more than doubled and that "it's premature for people to be concerned as much as they are." He also believes the controversy "may be more of a tourist industry issue than what's safe for the whales."

David Phillips, researcher with the International Marine Mammal Project, a division of Earth Island Institute, says that a number of locals are opposed to the project because whale watching is economically vital to the community. Yet he also believes future gray whale recovery could be in jeopardy: "Their current recovery is coming from having protected lagoons where they can breed and safely nurse."

CONTACT: Earth Island Institute's International Marine Mammal Project, 300 Broadway, No. 28, San Francisco, CA 94133-3312/[phone]; Mitsubishi Corporation, 520 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022/[phone].