Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Protest Against Coal Mine

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CARACAS, Sep 26 2011 (IPS) - Hundreds of local residents who live near the Fila Maestra coal mine, located 300 kilometers east of Caracas, staged roadblocks on the highway between the Venezuelan capital and tourism destinations in the northeastern Caribbean region as a protest against the mine’s impacts. "They are destroying wildlife, trees and water resources to dig up coal that Venezuela doesn’t need to sell, because it already takes in plenty of revenues with oil," farmer Graciano Bermúdez told Tierramérica in a telephone interview.

An Italian company, Energy Coal, extracts 250,000 tons of bituminous coal from the open-pit mine annually.

"We regret the inconvenience to people traveling east on the highway, but the public understands that we are protecting resources like the topsoil, of which they sometimes remove up to 500 tons to obtain a single ton of coal," said Emilio Guzmán, a councilor in the municipality of Manuel Bruzual, where the mine is located.