Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Town Says No to Pesticide Storage

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BUENOS AIRES, Jul 25 2005 (IPS) - Residents of the town of Bouwer, in the central Argentine province of Córdoba, are staging street protests against a temporary storage site for 12 tons of DDC (dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane) and other highly toxic pesticides. Six months ago, FUNAM, an environmental defense foundation, filed a court claim against a storage facility for toxic substances of the National Service for Health and Food Quality in the capital of Córdoba.

This month the judiciary ruled that the service must remove the dangerous substances, and the agency decided to transfer them to a waste treatment plant in the neighboring province of Santa Fe. But the chemicals were refused, and the cargo was left in Bouwer, just 10 km from the Córdoba capital, as a temporary measure.

Raúl Montenegro, of FUNAM, told Tierramérica that the final destination of the pesticides should be France or Belgium, where there are facilities capable of neutralizing the toxins.