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| Earl S. Cryer for The New York Times |
| The huge Sempra power plant under construction on the outskirts of Mexicali, a few miles from the United States border, is neighbor to a cemetery. The plant and another nearby will supply power to California. |
EXICALI, Mexico, Sept. 11 — American companies have long faced intense resistance to big new power plants from communities crying, "Not in my backyard."
Now they have a big new backyard: Mexico.
Here on the edge of Mexicali, a few miles from the California border, two huge power plants are rising in the desert, near a graveyard and a clutch of hovels. They will generate billions of watts for millions of Californians, a handful of jobs for Mexicans and pollution on both sides of the border.
They are "what free trade is all about," says an official of InterGen, the company building one. But a California congressman calls placing the plants in Mexico a form of environmental imperialism.
The plants will be the first of many built in Mexico specifically to provide power for the United States, says Mexico's energy secretary, Ernesto Martens. And that represents a new phase in relations between the two nations.
First came the labor of migrant workers. Then, in the 1990's, came the maquiladoras, the assembly-line factories providing cheap Mexican labor for American and multinational corporations under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Now these 21st-century plants — call them energy maquiladoras — represent a new way to generate wealth and power by capitalizing on the economic and legal differences dividing Mexico and the United States.
Mexico's environmental law enforcement is weaker, its government less transparent, its desire for foreign capital bottomless. California's energy demand is enormous — as big as its citizens' resistance to huge power plants.
These projects are the first result.
"Building anything on the Mexican side is much cheaper, mostly because of the regulatory system," which is less stringent than in the United States, said Ernesto Ruffo, President Vicente Fox's border commissioner.
President Bush and the United States Department of Energy had to issue special presidential permits for the plants, which will be powered by natural gas piped from Texas, cooled by Mexicali's sewage and linked to California's grid next year.
One is being built by InterGen, owned by Shell Oil and the Bechtel Corporation. Up to 560 of its 1060 megawatts will go north, 500 to Mexico. The company concedes that the plant does not meet California's pollution standards and would not be licensed across the border.
California's senators and two congressmen whose districts border Mexico have introduced legislation to stop InterGen from providing power to the state without meeting its standards. One, Representative Bob Filner, a San Diego Democrat, called placing the plants in Mexico "19th-century imperialism."
But even though, as Mr. Filner said, "the Border Patrol has not yet figured out how to stop air pollution," United States laws do not govern Mexico.
The second plant, built by Sempra Energy, based in San Diego, meets California standards. It could conceivably have been built there, but at a greater cost to its owners, who would have to pay to offset what pollution it would create. All its 600 megawatts will go to California.
A megawatt is roughly enough electricity for up to 1,000 homes. The plants together can power more than one million California houses.
Don Felsinger, president of Sempra Energy Group Enterprises, said "we thought it was good business and it made environmental sense" to build its plant to California standards. It took only six months to license the plant; in California, it would have been two years, he said.
Like California, Mexico is facing an energy crunch. The country needs at least 29,000 more megawatts over the next decade, at an expected cost of $30 billion — money Mexico does not have.
The irony of exporting power when Mexicans need more — and when their electricity bills are doubling — is not lost on the populace. But support for the new plants among politicians is nearly total. Public opposition to the plants was muted by the fact that they were a done deal before the public knew anything about them.
"There is no right to know in Mexico," said Fernando Medina, a social scientist in Mexicali. "Even had we known these plants would be built, no social or political force could stop them."
Margarito Quintero, who like Mr. Medina teaches at the Autonomous University of Baja California, said: "There are no laws in Mexico to limit these plants. Their existence is a reflection of the inequalities between the two countries."
The plants will pollute the air and the water in California's Imperial Valley, a heavily Hispanic region north of Mexicali, according to local officials. But they appear exempt from the environmental laws of the United States.
"Our Department of Energy said this project is not going to have any environmental impact, and we were screaming, saying, `That's garbage, of course it will,' " said Steve Birdsall, director of the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District.
He said the InterGen plant would send more than 3,800 tons of pollutants a year into the air (Sempra's smaller plant will emit one-tenth that much). And he assailed InterGen for ignoring California standards.
"They are the epitome of corporate arrogance," he said. "They have not been honest with us."
At InterGen, John Foster, a senior vice president, said his company had been "honest and straightforward." He said InterGen might even retrofit its plant to comply completely with California standards, assuming consumers would help pay the added cost of up to $20 million.
He said the key to building more plants in Mexico to serve the United States — "a great idea" — was to harmonize the two nations' environmental laws.
"Then everybody would be playing by the same rules," he said.
In Mexicali, so close to the United States and yet so far, people who live next to the plants accept them with a fatalistic shrug.
Elisabeth Figueroa, 31, started work this week as an office cleaner at the InterGen plant, making $2 an hour on a month-to-month contract. "We need the light and electricity around here, but most of it is going north," she said. "And we know it will be bad for the environment, but we need the work.
"Maybe it's unjust," she said. "But we Mexicans are used to injustice."
