Location of the projected terminal (in pink) on the coast of Rocha, between La Paloma (bottom left) and Cabo Polonio (upper right). Credit: Comisión Interministerial del Puerto de Aguas Profundas

By Pablo Tosquellas
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 6 2013 (IPS)

The small South American country of Uruguay could become a major logistics hub in the Southern Cone due to the deepwater port that the government is planning to build in a tourist area on the Atlantic ocean.

The project is controversial, because it would convert an undeveloped natural tourism zone in the department (province) of Rocha in the southeast of the country. And it would also compete with terminals in the country’s two giant neighbours: Brazil and Argentina.

There is already ongoing tension over trade issues between Uruguay and Argentina, and the ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo have been rivals since Spanish colonial times.

According to government sources consulted by IPS, the terminal will be built in stages, and because of its geographic location and its natural depth of 20 metres, it is being offered as a lower-cost shipment point for minerals and grains from neighbouring countries.

Enrique Pintado, Uruguay’s minister of transport and public works, told IPS that the project should be a kind of “cooperative” effort among all countries in the region, to save on shipping costs so that products reach their destination, mainly China and Southeast Asia, “with less distorted prices.”

According to a document from the Inter-ministerial Commission on the Deepwater Port, the terminal could generate 50 percent savings in logistics costs for certain trade flows from the region to Asia, and could eventually handle 50 million tons a year of cargo.

The minister said the capacity of other ports in the region is “saturated”, like Santos in the southeast of Brazil, which is Latin America’s biggest container port, which means “the waiting time for loading and unloading merchandise is excessive.”

The key to the success of the new port is its natural depth, according to Pablo Genta, under-secretary of transport and a member of the Inter-ministerial Commission.

Today, ports on the Atlantic that are about 12 metres deep can handle 60,000 tons of cargo per vessel. The port in Rocha could more than double that capacity, by serving ships carrying up to 160,000 tons, Genta told IPS.

The port of Santos handles more than 100 million tons of cargo annually.

“The port of Montevideo, in the best years, handles 12 million tons,” Genta said. “And the Buenos Aires terminal just barely reached 11 million tons last year.”

The port of Montevideo as seen from the Cerro neighbourhood. Credit: Daniel Stonek/CC BY 3.0

Uruguay wants to attract a significant portion of the grain and mineral cargo that Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay ship to China and Southeast Asia.

But the under-secretary stressed that Uruguay’s own future production justifies the plans for the port. He was referring to the Aratirí mining project in the centre of the country, where the Indian company Zamin Ferrous hopes to extract 18 million tons of iron ore a year which would be transported to the coast through a slurry pipeline.

Economic, topographical and marine hydrology studies are currently being carried out, as well as physical-chemical studies to establish an environmental baseline, with the aim of putting it out to tender in 2014.

A law passed in January approved construction of the port in the department of Rocha, in an area that contains the beach resort towns of Mar del Plata, El Palenque and San Francisco.

The port is to cover an area of 3,027 hectares, for which land will have to be expropriated. In July, the government called for expressions of interest from potential users of the terminal.

The coastline of Mar del Plata, El Palenque and San Francisco is sparsely inhabited. The white sands and waves and natural vegetation form part of a 46-km stretch of beach between La Paloma, Rocha’s main resort town, and Cabo Polonio, a remote beach village that is inaccessible by road, has no electricity or running water, and is home to a colony of southern sea lions and South America’s most important mobile sand dune area.

Opponents of the port, especially the Movement for a Sustainable Uruguay (MOVUS), argue that there is no clear evidence that neighbouring countries will be interested in using the port.

The only obvious freight use, they say, is by the planned Aratirí open-pit mine, which does not yet have all the permits it needs, and has run up against strong social and environmental opposition.

Legal action has been taken to challenge the approval of construction of the port.

Minister Pintado argued, however, that Uruguay cannot fail to take advantage of the fact that Asia “has been shifting its interest in investment and business westward and is breaking down the North-South economic logic.”

In the mid term, he said, the port would handle shipments of grains and bulk liquids, especially oil and its by-products.

The authorities estimate the cost at one billion dollars – an investment that will be made in stages, “like the layers of an onion,” Pintado said. Different terminals will be built as neighbouring countries and the private sector express interest.

Corporación Navíos SA, a shipping company that operates under the free-zone procedure in the port of Nueva Palmira at the confluence of the Uruguay and Paraná rivers, has closely followed the process and hopes to invest in the Rocha terminal, perhaps by means of a public-private contract.

The firm stores and transports freight that arrives in river barges from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Ruben Martínez, general manager of Corporación Navíos, told IPS that many of the company’s ocean-going ships set out with “incomplete” loads.

“There is merchandise, like iron ore, that requires larger vessels, which need a stop off at another port to complete their load,” he said. For that reason, he added, the activities in the ports of Nueva Palmira and Rocha could complement each other.

The Partnership for Southern Equity defines energy equity as "the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits from energy production and consumption". Credit: Bigstock

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Jun 24 2013 (IPS)

Advocates of the concept of “energy equity” have begun employing it in the southern United States to create a diverse coalition of citizens who might otherwise approach energy policy issues differently.

It started when the Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE), an organisation that has looked at issues of equity in other areas, such as housing, economic opportunity and transportation, realised that equity was also a key issue in energy policy."Communities of colour and low-income communities...stand to benefit the most from energy efficiency."
-- Partnership for Southern Equity

On its website, the organisation defines energy equity as “the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits from energy production and consumption”.

“Communities of colour and low-income communities are more likely to be exposed to air pollution from coal plants, are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and stand to benefit the most from energy efficiency and employment programs that help lower bills,” it added.

With these facts in mind, a coalition of organisations has formed including PSE, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), GreenLaw, the Centre for Sustainable Communities, Georgia Watch, the Fulton-Atlanta Community Action Authority and Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta.

The coalition looks to what its see as more equitable energy policies that have been achieved through citizen engagement in other places such as San Francisco, California, where a coalition including Our City and other environmental and social justice organisations came together to support an initiative called Clean Power SF.

Clean Power SF was a policy proposal to decrease reliance on for-profit utility companies and to create instead a new entity to provide energy for San Francisco, with at least 50 percent of it coming from renewable sources.

In 2007, the coalition won approval for Clean Power SF from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2007, although the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission at first refused to close a fossil fuel plant in an area called Potrero Hill.

By 2011, however, the coalition succeeded in closing Potrero Hill and stopping a proposed natural gas plant.

Inspiration and vision

Earlier this month, the new energy equity coalition in Georgia invited Barbara Hale, assistant general manager of the power enterprise for the San Francisco Public Utility Commission, to address their group at a forum.

“They were able to provide a visionary story. They have done a lot more than Georgia was ready to do,” Dwayne Patterson, director of regional organising and civic engagement for PSE, told IPS.

“The main reason why the collaboration has come together is so that we can create the space of working together. We know through the workings of the progressive movement in Georgia and throughout the South there is a culture of folks not working together. Folks have been very successful at working in silos,” Patterson said.

PSE is “about changing the old paradigm”, he said, “where collaboration is the new normal, and working smarter rather than working harder is the new normal”.

One of the first actions for the coalition has been to increase citizen attendance at recent hearings of the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), which is considering a long-term plan by Georgia Power for energy provision to the state’s residents.

One activist not connected with the coalition who attended the PSC hearings confirmed to IPS that in recent days they had saw a marked increase in citizen participation that appeared, at least in part, to be due to the new energy equity coalition.

“We have to put the concept of power back on the table. There are situations where we can fight and lose, not because it’s the wrong issue, but because we haven’t amassed the right amount of power in order to be effective,” Patterson said.

Amelia Shenstone, southeast energy organiser for SACE, has a big picture idea of the meaning of energy equity: “When we produce energy, we’re not doing it at disproportionate costs to certain communities,” she described. “We would shift energy production to types that don’t have negative consequences,” she told IPS, citing solar and wind power as examples of such energy.

“The sources we use now are risky and have a lot of side effects…from the communities where it’s mined, to the communities where it’s burned, and where the residue that’s left over gets stored,” she said.

“I don’t want anyone to have to deal with that burden, I’d rather we reduce the consumption of coal. Imagine if it happened it your backyard, and how about we don’t do that to anybody?” she said

Shenstone insisted that citizens showing up to publicly comment when government bodies formulate public policy that affects them is key to achieving energy equity.

“People don’t know how decisions are made regarding where their energy comes from, and how they can participate. Look at who’s on the PSC and their politics… the diversity in our population is not represented there,” she said.