ENVIRONMENT-PUERTO RICO: Out With ‘Eco-Hypocrisy’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Carmelo Ruiz

SAN JUAN, May 11 1998 (IPS) - To the Puerto Rican government, it was a gesture intended to show to the people that protection of the environment is at the top of its agenda, but as far as those people it was trying to impress is concerned, it was nothing more than eco- hypocrisy.

So when recently governor Pedro Rossello assembled public school students from all over Puerto Rico at a stadium in the city of Bayamon for a tree-planting event, the media were out in full force, but to environmentalists it was nothing more than propaganda and ‘greenwashing’.

“This tree planting is an act of ‘eco-hypocrisy’ on the government’s part. On the one hand, it announces the most ambitious reforestation plan in our history, and on the other hand it is promoting the worst environmental destruction ever.

“By indiscriminately giving construction permits to suburbs, hotels and highways, the government is destroying many more trees than it is planting,” said Wanda Colon, spokesperson of Communities Opposed to Route 66, a grassroots organisation that opposes the construction of an expressway that will link the San Juan metropolitan area to the island’s northeast.

According to Colon, the proposed Route 66 will “destroy 12 acres of wetlands and 77 acres of forest, resulting in the destruction of over 45,000 mature trees”.

Government agencies have also gotten into the environmental act. The Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the Solid Waste Authority (SWA) are distributing flyers and leaflets proclaiming their commitment to environmental protection and giving advice to readers on how to become good ‘eco-citizens’.

This act local environmentalists also see as hypocrisy. They, along with the United States Environmental Protection Agency say PREPA is one of the major air polluters in Puerto Rico. The Power Authority’s educational literature, which advises consumers on how to save energy, contrasts sharply with its policies.

It has publicly discarded conservation measures and renewable energy as ‘impractical’ and has opted instead to build new power plants. The construction of these new plants, one of which will be powered by coal, is being strongly opposed by both environmentalists and PREPA’s labour union.

The SWA advises citizens to put their trash in the proper receptacle and to participate in recycling programmes, even as it simultaneously proposes the construction of more landfills and incinerators.

Last year, the SWA gave the green light to a proposed super- landfill in the southern coast town of Salinas. The landfill, which will be built and operated by the US-based Browning Ferris Industries corporation, is opposed by both local citizens and the town’s poultry industry.

Environmentalists argue that SWA is using recycling as little more than a publicity stunt. “SWA’s current policies make recycling impractical in Puerto Rico,” said Juan Rosario of the environmental NGO Mision Industrial.

Environmentalists are also concerned about the haphazard way in which the Rosello administration is handing out construction permits for infrastructure projects, including aqueducts, highways, housing, shopping malls and tourist resorts.

Opposition parties and grassroots groups claim that developers obtain their permits in ‘fast track’ fashion in exchange for financial contributions to Rossello’s re-election campaign.

In the hills of the Caimito section of San Juan, architects and building contractors are busy building Montehiedra, a massive suburban complex comprised of a gigantic shopping mall and more than a dozen high-priced housing projects.

Some of the houses sell for 300,000 dollars.

The shopping mall, known as the Montehiedra Town Centre, has already been completed and is one of the largest in Puerto Rico. To environmentalists, it has become a symbol of suburban expansion gone out of control.

Caimito residents fear that their centuries-old community will be overrun by the developers and they have already started to fight back. Organised as the Commission of Citizens to the Rescue of Caimito, community members last week marched into the entrance to the Montehiedra shopping mall.

The demonstrators, playing music and chanting slogans against the developers and the government, walked past construction sites carved out of the hillsides and the fast food outlets that surround the shopping mall and spoke to the press and to onlookers about the reasons for their demonstration.

“They are not only destroying mountains and the habitats of our species, they’re also clogging the basin of nearby lake Carraizo with concrete,” said Caimito resident Jose Angel Rodriguez. Lake Carraizo, some four kilometres to the southeast in the town of Trujillo Alto, provides the San Juan metropolitan area with most of its drinking water.

Professor Jose Molinelli, who heads the Environmental Sciences Department of the Rio Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico, which is no more than three kilometres north of Montehiedra and Caimito, said several problems could emerge as a result of this project.

“When it rains, the natural downstream flow of the waters will be blocked by the new suburbs. Our creeks, rivers and reservoirs will then be filled with sediment, further undermining our already endangered drinking water supply.”

The professor also warned about traffic problems to be created: “Those people that will live in Montehiedra will buy cars, which will clog the expressway, causing enormous traffic jams. And when that happens, they’ll add another lane to the expressway. And more trees will then be cut in order to make room for this new lane.”

Caimito residents say they will continue to fight against the project which they see as the government’s violation of its own environmental laws.

To some, the situation in Caimito exposes the emptiness of the governor’s rhetoric on environmental issues.

“One can see in Caimito that Governor Rossello’s tree planting programme is nothing more than a smokescreen to distract citizens from the systematic destruction of our ecosystem. With one hand the government destroys the environment and with the other one it washes its public image,” said Wilfredo Lopez of Mision Industrial.