Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Activists Worried About Swans as Pulp Mill Reopens

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Feb 21 2005 (IPS) - Environmentalists have launched an international campaign to protest a decision by the Chilean government to allow a cellulose plant, blamed for the deaths of a number of black-necked swans, to reopen near a nature reserve in southern Chile.

The delight of environmentalists at the closure of the Valdivia factory, built by the company Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (Celco), lasted less than a month.

The wood pulp plant, which belongs to the Angelini Group, one of the two largest Chilean business conglomerates, received authorisation from the governmental environment commission (COREMA) in that region to renew its operations this month.

Celco was shut down on Jan. 18 by the regional environmental authorities after a number of irregularities were detected.

The pulp mill, which began to operate in February 2004, dumps its industrial waste into the Cruces river around 15 km before it runs into the Carlos Andwandter nature sanctuary.

Before the plant was built, local fishing communities had successfully blocked plans for it to dump its industrial effluent into the Pacific Ocean.

The company, which is located in the province of Valdivia, around 790 km south of Santiago, was accused of producing more than the authorised 550,000 tons a year of bleached kraft cellulose from pinewood and eucalyptus; dumping liquid waste at temperatures higher than what is permitted; and extracting water from unauthorised wells.

According to Sara Larraín, director of the Sustainable Chile Programme, Celco has been illegally producing more than 850,000 tons of cellulose annually.

And last April, the regional COREMA hit Celco with a 25,000-dollar fine for the foul smell coming from the factory, which was perceptible a full 60 km away, in the city of Valdivia.

Local environmental groups hold Celco responsible for the massive die-off of black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus) and other species in the reserve, which was placed on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance in 1981.

(The Ramsar Convention, which was signed in the Iranian city of that name in 1971, is an international treaty aimed at preserving and ensuring the sustainable use of wetlands, as sources of water and biodiversity.)

When the factory was temporarily closed, the manager, José Vivanco, complained that the regional COREMA was overreacting. “We could have resolved the problems cited for the closure of the plant through agreements with the authorities,” he maintained.

However, the regional COREMA allowed Celco to reopen on Feb. 16, reporting that the plant had met four specific requirements, including the closure of the pipeline running to the unauthorised wells; measures to keep chemical waste products within acceptable levels; and the start of new environmental impact assessments.

But economist Cristóbal Zolezzi with the non-governmental organisation Fundación Terram pointed out that “Three of the four requirements set by COREMA for reopening the plant involve medium- to long-term actions by the firm.”

“That means the environmental impact will only become clear much later, after the damages are already irreversible,” he complained.

“We believe the government has made an irresponsible decision,” said Sandra Conejeros, a representative of the citizens group Action for the Swans, which has the backing of international environmental groups like Greenpeace Chile.

“Our organisation has provided abundant evidence demonstrating the severe deterioration of the sanctuary’s ecosystem and health problems suffered by local communities, which have been caused by pollution from the cellulose plant,” she told IPS.

Environmentalists argue that there is proof that Celco is to blame for the ecological disaster, which has occurred since the pulp mill opened.

Conejeros said hundreds of people in the towns of San José de la Mariquina, Rucaco, Rayula and Ciruelos, located near the plant, are suffering from respiratory ailments, irritated eyes, headaches and other health problems since the wood pulp plant began to emit toxic gases.

She said Action for the Swans would not give up the fight, and that it had already launched an international campaign.

The plan is to talk to companies in the United States and Japan that purchase cellulose from Celco, and to take action to get the nature sanctuary included on the Ramsar Convention’s Montreux Record, a list of degraded wetlands that are to be given priority attention for conservation efforts.

Although the centre-left government of President Ricardo Lagos publicly committed itself to getting the reserve included on the Montreux Record, it has not yet made the request.

Besides attempting to come up with a solution through the Montreaux Record, Action for the Swans has sent a full report on the situation to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) environment directorate.

“We are calling for the restoration of the sanctuary’s ecosystem and the protection of the remaining swans, and the government’s decision to reopen the pulp mill clearly does not contribute to that,” said Jürguen Rottman, president of the National Committee for the Defence of Flora and Fauna (CODEFF).

“Swans know nothing about rules and requirements,” Rottman told IPS. “The factory is opening up again, even though the environmental conditions are just as bad as before.”

The government, meanwhile, insists that it is doing things by the book, and that it is necessary to await the results of the new impact studies that the firm has been ordered to carry out.

“The company has lived up to the recommendations and statutes of the regional COREMA” said a brief statement by Minister Francisco Vidal, the government’s secretary-general, defending the decision to allow Celco to reopen.

While it was closed, the pulp mill lost one million dollars in sales and 250,000 dollars in profits a day.

Wood pulp and copper are Chile’s chief foreign exchange earners.

Up to October, the Carlos Andwandter nature sanctuary was home to around 6,000 black-necked swans, the largest population of these birds in South America. However, there are now less than 1,000 left in the reserve, according to the National Forestry Corporation.

The first part of a study commissioned by the governmental National Environment Commission (CONAMA) concluded that 120 swans died and more than 4,000 migrated from the reserve because of a dearth of their main food, a waterweed known as “luchecillo”, and elevated levels of iron in their blood. The dead birds were also found to be infested with parasites.

The study was carried out by Chile’s Austral University.

The second part, which was made public on Feb. 17, supported the conclusions of the first, but did not explain the origin of the high concentrations of heavy metals like iron, copper and manganese found in the luchecillo (Egeria densa).

According to the researchers, water samples collected from the reserve for the second phase of the study were less toxic than those analysed in the first stage, and organochlorides, one of the main waste products released by pulp mills, were not found.

However, the researchers did report the presence of compounds that would not normally be found in the swamp’s ecosystem, like phthalates, which are toxic.

It was announced that the third, and final, phase of the study will attempt to determine whether the high concentration of metals is due to natural causes, or is the result of human activity.

“We have the worst impression of the Austral University, because we believe the study they carried out lacks scientific rigour,” said Conejeros.

She also said the study’s results “could never be conclusive, since the researchers are not specifically analysing the relationship between the plant’s waste products and the state of the nature sanctuary.”

“This is the tale of a death foretold,” said the environmentalist, who pointed out that in November 1995, CODEFF issued its own environmental impact study on the proposed installation of the Celco plant in Valdivia, which showed that the project was environmentally unsound.

At the time, CODEFF stated that the company’s own baseline and environmental impact studies were biased, incomplete and lacking in scientific rigour.

The environmental group argued that the insufficient information collected for the company’s studies made it impossible to predict the magnitude of the impact on the flora, fauna, soil, vegetation and people in the Cruces river basin.

The company’s environmental impact study, carried out by Geotécnica Consultores, failed to take into account, for example, the effect of the pulp mill’s heavy water usage on water birds in the area.

Swans and other plant-eating birds require an adequate water level for their food, which consists mainly of water plants like luchecillo, noted the report produced by CODEFF nearly a decade ago.