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Photo: Ana Rodríguez Carrington (CC BY 2.0)Victory: Biosphere Reserve in Baja California Saved from Toxic Mine
Known as an “ecological treasure house,” the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve at the southern tip of Baja California will not be spoiled by toxic mine waste, thanks in part to AIDA’s advocacy.
The reserve was once an island, so it’s home to rare plant and animal species. Canyons, swimming holes, and hot springs can be found in its granite mountain range and lowland tropical forests.
Thanks to AIDA and our partners in Mexico, the Mexican government denied an environmental permit for the Paredones Amarillos gold mine, halting the project for the time being. To protect the biosphere reserve, AIDA helped educate community groups and decision makers about the mine's risks. This helped to build the political momentum necessary for the government to deny the permit.
To extract gold from the mountains, the Canadian company Vista Gold proposed to carve out huge quantities of rock—each ton containing a mere gram of gold–-grind it into sludge, and treated it with cyanide. The company planned to dump massive amounts of toxic waste (called “tailings”) behind a dam intended to store it forever. Unfortunately, tailings dams can break for various reasons, as happened at Bolivia’s Porco mine in 1996. When that dam collapsed, more than a quarter million metric tons of tailings flooded the river and contaminated 500 miles (800 km) of waterways in Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay.
The mine could also cause acid mine drainage. When sulfur-containing rocks are exposed to air and water, sulfuric acid forms, which causes toxic heavy metals to dissolve and drain into the watershed. The risk of acid mine drainage in Sierra La Laguna was significant and the human and environmental cost would have been tremendous: thousands of people and countless wildlife in the reserve rely on its water for survival.
Depleting freshwater is a further threat because mines use tremendous quantities of water. Owing to the scarcity of water in the reserve, Vista Gold proposed to build a plant on the Pacific coast to remove salt from sea water in a highly energy-intensive process, and then pump the water 45 km to the mine site. The desalination plant posed a threat to the endangered leatherback sea turtle.
Singly and together, the mine’s impacts would have devastated a rare jewel, a unique and lush paradise worth saving for future generations.
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Judge Orders Measures to Protect Public Health in La Oroya
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 14, 2005 Judge Orders Measures to Protect Public Health in La Oroya In April of 2005, a Lima civil court ordered the Peruvian Ministry of Health (MINSA) and the General Directorate for Environmental Health (DIGESA) to take steps to alleviate a public health crisis in La Oroya, Peru, a city where the Doe Run company of Missouri operates a large multi-metal smelter. The court ruled that MINSA and DIGESA have failed to carry out the government’s duty to protect the population in La Oroya. In spite of numerous studies showing a severe health crisis in the city, the government has taken no action to protect public health. The Doe Run smelter emits large amounts of toxic heavy metals and sulfur dioxide into the environs of the city. According to a recent study by the company and health authorities, the contamination is so severe that 99.9 percent of the children in the neighborhood closest to the smelter—La Oroya Antigua—have blood lead levels that far exceed the permissible levels recommended by the World Health Organization.
Read moreLegal Action Temporarily Protects Leatherback Sea Turtles in Costa Rica
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 30, 2005 CONTACTS: Rolando Castro, CEDARENA, (506) 283-7080, rcastro@cedarena.org Anna Cederstav, AIDA / Earthjustice (510) 550-6700, acederstav@earthjustice.org LEGAL ACTION TEMPORARILY PROTECTS LEATHERBACK SEA TURTLES IN COSTA RICA SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — By admitting a suit filed by environmental organizations to protect the leatherback turtle, the Constitutional Chamber of the Costa Rica Supreme Court has granted an injunction against construction projects in the Leatherback Turtle Marine Park. The defendants -- the National Technical Environmental Secretariat (SETENA), the Municipality of Santa Cruz, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Environment and Energy, are charged with violating the constitutional right to a healthy environment. The suit, brought by the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) and its Costa Rican participating organizations – the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center (CEDARENA), and Justice for Nature (JPN) – seeks the effective protection of the park. Specifically, the suit aims to halt construction of beach houses and tourist developments within the national park area, and to prevent the government from authorizing potentially detrimental construction before the lands dedicated to the park have been protected. The leatherback turtles are ancient reptiles surviving from the age of the dinosaurs. The species is highly endangered; with Pacific populations threatened with extinction within a decade, and as such is protected under various international treaties and the Costa Rican legislation. The presence of humans and particularly lights from houses, disturb turtles coming ashore to lay eggs and prevent the hatchlings from finding their way to the sea, thus posing a severe threat to the reproduction and future viability of the leatherback turtle. The Costa Rican Congress created the Leatherback Turtle Marine Park in 1995, to protect critical habitat where the leatherback turtle is known to reproduce. The park includes the most important remaining nesting beaches on the Pacific Coast of the Americas -- The Carbon, Ventanas, Langosta, and Grande beaches. In fact, eighty percent of the leatherbacks that nested in the 2001-2002 seasons in Costa Rica did so in the Park. Other Costa Rican nesting beaches, such as Flamingo, and Tamarindo, have already been destroyed by the lack of coastal environmental planning. “The Leatherback Marine Park should be protected from poorly planned development,” said Anna Cederstav, AIDA Program Director. “Costa Rica has an important opportunity to protect this species, which is not only part of our global environmental heritage but also a valuable economic resource for the nation.” In a 2004 report, the Costa Rican General Attorney’s office urged the authorities to not permit construction in the Park, citing impacts on the leatherbacks. The recommendation has not been heeded. The NGOs assert that the government has failed to fulfill their obligations to protect the Park and endangered marine biodiversity. The Santa Cruz Municipality should defend local interests and guarantee environmental protection within its jurisdiction. SETENA must ensure that development does not damage fragile ecosystems and protected areas. The Ministry of Environment is responsible for expropriating and conserving the land within the national park limits, and the Ministry of Finance is supposed to dedicate the necessary funds. “The injunction against construction and further permitting sends a clear message to SETENA and the Municipality that in the case of National Parks, governments must act with caution and not approve projects that threaten the ultimate goal for which the parks were established,” said Rolando Castro, attorney with CEDARENA. “We trust that the Constitutional Court will decide in favor of the leatherback turtle, a species that the court has previously determined to be a shared and highly migratory resource. The Park has great potential for scientific and tourism purposes and is an important source of local income.” This case will prevent irreparable damage to the area designated as National Park while the expropriation proceeds, and will establish an important precedent in that there are many other parks, not only in Costa Rica but throughout the Americas, that face similar threats.
Read moreHealth Risks in La Oroya are Higher Than Expected: Lead and Lead Compounds Classified as Carcinogens (Spanish text)
PARA PUBLICACIÓN INMEDIATA: 8 de febrero de 2005 Contactos: Carlos Chirinos, SPDA, +51-4211394, cchirinos@spda.org.pe Eliana Ames, LABOR, +51-2616515, eames@labor.org.pe Anna Cederstav, AIDA, +1-510-550-6748 (EEUU) RIESGO DE SALUD EN LA OROYA ES MAYOR DE LO PENSADO: PLOMO Y COMPUESTOS DE PLOMO CLASIFICADOS COMO CANCERÍGENOS. LIMA, PERÚ – El 31 de enero de 2005, el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos de los Estados Unidos publicó el Informe Semestral sobre Cancerígenos, el cual incluye por primera vez el plomo y todos los compuestos con contenido de plomo como sustancias que probablemente causan cáncer en seres humanos. Este informe enlista las sustancias cancerígenas en dos categorías, aquellas “conocidas como cancerígenas para el hombre,”y aquellas “con probabilidad razonable de ser un cancerígeno para el hombre.”Debe resaltarse en este Informe la inclusión del plomo y de los compuestos del plomo en la categoría de “probabilidad razonable de ser un cancerígeno humano”. Esta nueva clasificación de plomo y todos los compuestos de plomo se ha basado en datos epidemiológicos de estudios en humanos y en evidencia sustancial de estudios en animales experimentales. Por ejemplo, se demostró que la exposición al plomo aumenta la presencia de tumores en los riñones, el cerebro, el sistema hematopoyético y los pulmones en ratas y/o ratones (IARC 1980, 1987). Todavía no se entienden completamente los mecanismos por los que el plomo causa cáncer, pero los estudios realizados en seres humanos que estuvieron expuestos por su ocupación al plomo, han sugerido que el plomo daña los cromosomas o el ADN, lo cual puede causar cáncer (ATSDR 1999, NTP 2003). El plomo es liberado en el ambiente predominantemente por procesos industriales. Dentro de estos procesos, las fundiciones de plomo por sí solas son actualmente la fuente principal de las emisiones de este metal pesado, contabilizando más del 78% de todas emisiones de plomo en 2001 en los Estados Unidos (EPA 2003). Además de incluir el plomo y sus compuestos en la clasificación de sustancias con “probabilidad razonable de ser un cancerígeno para el hombre”, en noviembre de 2004 la Agencia de Protección Ambiental (EPA) de los Estados Unidos anunció el inicio de un proceso de recopilación de información necesaria para revisar los estándares de calidad de aire respecto del plomo. El estándar actual de los Estados Unidos de 1.5 ug/m3 como promedio anual, el que sirvió de base a los estándares fijados para el Perú en 2003, no ha sido revisado en más de veinte años, por lo que no toma en cuenta la información científica más reciente y esta alejado de los estándares internacionales. De hecho, el estándar de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) es de 0.5 microgramos de plomo por metro cúbico en el aire, siendo hasta tres veces más estricto que el de los Estados Unidos. Estas ultimas dos acciones del gobierno de los Estados Unidos evidencian la rigurosidad necesaria con la que se viene asumiendo el tema del plomo, debido al alto riesgo que este conlleva para la salud humana. En contraste, en el caso peruano resulta particularmente preocupante la situación de ciudades como La Oroya y otras poblaciones ubicadas en áreas de influencia minero metalúrgicas en donde se producen concentrados de plomo, por las altas concentraciones de este contaminante, que claramente representan un riesgo para las personas. No hay duda entonces de la urgencia de implementar medidas eficientes para evitar el aumento del riesgo para la salud humana, incluso la posibilidad de sufrir cáncer, que enfrentan las personas que viven y trabajan en estos lugares.
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