Hermosillo, Mexico - Farmworkers and rural residents from several communities around the Sonora State capital, Hermosillo, have started a sit-in protest in front of the state capital building, declaring that they have been affected by toxins from a mine spill that occurred in August of 2014.

According to a report in the Mexican weekly, Proceso, residents from the communities of Molino de Camou, Fructuoso Méndez, El Oregano, Jacinto Lopez, San Juan San Bartolo and Mesa del Seri have reported at least twenty new cases of illness due to contact with water from Hermosillo's reservoir. The water source is fed directly by the Sonora River, which was contaminated in the massive mine spill.

"Everyday more people get sick... a few days ago we had 17 and now we have 20; they were attended to superficially in November by the state's medical unit... but they never came back," said Jose Lopez, a resident of Molino de Camou, in the Proceso report.

It was little over 6 months ago when a cocktail of more than 40 million cubic liters of sulpheric acid and heavy metals leaked out of a contention dam at the Buenavista Copper mine in the town of Cananea. The spill contaminated the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers, which run more than 270 kilometers.

The spill initially affected more than 20,000 people located in 7 municipalities along the Sonora River. The country's environment and natural resources secretary, Juan Jose Guerra Abud called the spill the "worst environmental disaster" the country has ever experienced.

This past week, the director of the mine's company, Grupo Mexico, Oscar Gonzalez Rocha tried to downplay the extent of the ecological and social disaster saying that, "it was exaggerated at a national level... but at a national level we have many [spills] from Pemex [Mexico's state oil company] that are not publicized like this one."

Also this past week, Mexico's Federal Commission for the Prevention of Sanitary Risks published a bulletin saying that the negative health impacts of people affected by the spill shot up by 600% in the past 3 months, dramatically countering the claim of Grupo Mexico.