Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Phone-In Complaints about River Polluters

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 13 2009 (IPS) - The environmental group Greenpeace of Argentina set up a phone number for anonymous denunciations of illegal runoff into the basin of the Riachuelo, Argentina's most polluted river, which runs through the south of the city of Buenos Aires. “The idea is to have a base of reports on points of clandestine dumping [in order to] comply with the ruling” of the Supreme Court of Justice, Greenpeace's Gonzalo Girolami told Tierramérica.

In March 2008, the highest court ordered the national government, the province of Buenos Aires and the city to develop a watershed management plan, and asked environmental groups to monitor the program.

According to Greenpeace, thousands of industries dump contaminated liquids into the Riachuelo, and the goal is a 50-percent cut of dumping that includes lead, mercury, chromium and cadmium by 2015.