The Appeals Court of the southern Chilean city of Arica has ordered the government to pay compensations totaling 2.4 million dollars to 176 people who suffered serious harm from exposure to toxic mining waste imported from Sweden. The ruling, announced on May 17, ''is an unprecedented landmark in the history of environmental management and environmental law in our country,'' attorney Fernando Dougnac, president of the environmental group that initiated legal action in June 1999.

In 1984 and 1985, the Swedish company Boliden Metal AB sent 20,000 tons of mining waste with high arsenic and lead content to Chile. The waste was stored by the Chilean firm Promel in the port district of Arica, near the homes of hundreds of poor families. The local health service did not oppose the storage at the time.