Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Red Tide Over the Orinoco

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

CARACAS, Mar 17 2008 (IPS) - Hundreds of liters of red liquid waste were spilled in the waters of the Orinoco River near Ciudad Guayana, 500 km southeast of Caracas and center of heavy industry, including steel, iron and aluminum mills and hydroelectrical production. The environmental authorities and heads of state and private enterprise remained quiet about the spill, “which is not the first time for the silence, the passivity and the lack of sanctions and preventive measures,” Jesús Carrera, activist with the environmental group Biosfera Ecológica, told Tierramérica.

The pipeline that dumped the liquid into the river, near the docks of the aluminum company Venalum, “is one of the 17 polluting discharges that the Orinoco receives at this industrial center, which demonstrates the decline in environmental oversight over more than a decade,” says Luis Guzmán, researcher at the University of Guayana.