This month Mexico's giant state-owned oil company, Pemex, is privatizing the first of dozens of plants in a region that some environmentalists view as a potential Love Canal. Concern is mounting that Pemex will simply use the sale to hand over an environmental time bomb before it explodes. PNS associate editor Joel Simon's book "Bordering on Destruction: Exploring Mexico's Environmental Crisis," will be published by Sierra Club Books next year.

COATZACOALCOS, MEXICO -- Eusebio Gonzalez, a grizzled 66-year-old fisherman, hardly ventures into the polluted Coatzacoalcos River anymore. Chemicals dumped by Pemex petrochemical plants have wiped out most of the fish, he says, and those which have survived are not fit to eat.

"You cut the fish open and a smell like ammonia comes out," says Gonzalez, sitting in front of a quiet boathouse. "If you eat it, your stomach swells like a balloon. Still, we have to sell it. What else are we going to live on?"

This month, one of the four massive petrochemical plants which are responsible for most of the pollution in the Coatzacoalcos River will be auctioned off. Altogether 61 plants scattered across the country will eventually be sold. The sale marks the first-ever privatization of a division of Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos), the giant state owned oil industry, long a bedrock of Mexican national pride.

Some environmentalists are hoping the sale will pave the way for a major environmental cleanup of the plants by new owners. Others fear Pemex will simply use the sale as an excuse to wash its hands of the environmental disasters it has left behind, in effect handing over an environmental time bomb before it explodes.

"We're hopeful this will be an opportunity to develop a plan to deal with the hazardous waste," says Betty Ferber, international coordinator for the Mexico City based Group of 100. "But at the same time we're worried that Coatzacoalcos could become a Mexican Love Canal."

No studies have been done on the long-term health risks in the region, the heart of Mexico's once thriving petrochemical industry, but no one who can help it eats the fish caught in the river. The Coatzacoalcos receives more than 1 million cubic meters of waste water each day. A decade ago it regularly caught fire. Fishermen report that their nets bring up yellow, gelatinous sediment from the river bottom.

Meanwhile, farmers complain that their wells have been poisoned and their crops damaged by acid rain. Ezekiel Ulzes Garcia, who lives near one of the four plants up for sale, is organizing a group of farmers who claim their crops have been destroyed by toxic runoff. "The corn doesn't grow, the coconuts don't ripen, and the children get sick from drinking water from the well," Ulzes complains, standing over a fetid pool of polluted water that has collected near his wooden shack.

"Have you ever seen it rain oil from the sky?" asks Lorenzo Bozada Robles, a biologist and expert on the region's pollution. "One day it started to rain like any other day. Then I realized it was not water, it was oil ... People were sliding around falling down in the street."

While environmentalists debate the impact privatization could have on the region, other observers fear the high cost of dealing with the damage will scare off future investors altogether.

To reassure buyers, Pemex recently carried out environmental audits to determine the areas where the plants are in violation of Mexican environmental law. Investors can then incorporate those costs into their bids.

George Baker, a Mexican oil industry analyst, argues that many plants are so obsolete that they will require enormous investments to bring them up to international standards. "If you are going to go through all the trouble to rebuild the plants, you might as well do it right and be in compliance with environmental regulations," says Baker.

Julia Carabias, Mexico's top environmental official, says however that the audits were limited to determining compliance with existing law. Pemex itself has no plans to clean up the Coatzacoalcos region.

"How could we ask Pemex to remediate everything?" Carabias asks. "They'd have to remediate the whole country, and we wouldn't accomplish anything."

The audits themselves describe a plethora of environmental problems, including emissions of sulfur, carbon monoxide, and ammonia into the air, and dumping of chlorides, benzene, acids and oil into the river, according to Homero Aridjis, President of the Group of 100, who obtained copies.

Even then, Pemex officials would only allow inspection of the super-modern Morelos plants where engineers painstakingly explained the anti-contamination systems and defended Pemex's environmental record. Pemex's other plants, which lack such basic amenities as scrubbers and water treatment facilities, were off limits. A Pemex official in Mexico City claimed that the refinery in Minatitlan which was visibly sending plumes of steam into the air was "not operating."

At a time when Mexico is desperately trying to attract foreign investment, few observers expect that whatever companies do decide to buy the plants will be required to clean them up.

"Environmental laws are being eroded under Zedillo," says Maria Elena Mesta Fernandez, an attorney with the Mexican Center on Environmental Law. "The government's program is to attract foreign investment at all cost."

She pointed to the government's decision to no longer require environmental impact studies for most industries.

Coatzacoalcos biologist Bozada fears that the privatization scheme will transfer valuable public assets into private hands while the people of Coatzacoalcos will be left to deal with the mess Pemex leaves behind.

"During all the years I was fighting against Pemex I never lost faith that one day it would be a clean company, with responsible executives -- a patrimony of the nation," Bozada says. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think they would sell off the industry."