Citizens groups in Chile convinced the nation's Comptroller General to declare illegal the construction of a cemetery in a Santiago area ceded by the Housing Ministry without conducting an environmental impact study. Two groups, Ecological Action and Defend the city announced Aug. 25 that the official agency had accepted their petitions. Now it is up to the housing minister, Jaime Ravinet, to issue an order to stop construction.

Work on the Canaan Cemetery, owned by an evangelical church, began on a parcel of land measuring 71,000 square meters in Padahuel, west of the capital.

Authorization for the cemetery violated statutes in favor of “unscrupulous entrepreneurs” who could charge high prices for funeral services and sales of burial plots, said Ecological Action coordinator Luis Mariano Rendón.