A subsidiary of the Swiss mining company Xstrata has submitted an environmental-impact study on the first of three hydroelectric-dam projects it is planning on land in Chilean Patagonia that had formerly been slated for a massive aluminum smelter. The submission, announced Jan. 8, marks the start of a 60-day period in which the public can review and comment on the impact statement, which is posted at the website of Conama, Chile’s lead environmental agency. (See Web address below.) Called Río Cuervo, the proposed dam would have an installed capacity of 600 megawatts, require an investment of US$600 million and come online in 2012. It would be located in the Puerto Aysén region, just north of the central Patagonian city of Coyhaique...
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A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has overturned injunctions that had held up a R$4.5 billion (US$2 billion) government project to divert water from Brazil’s second largest river basin to the arid northeast. The project, which critics claim would have major environmental impacts, must now obtain a construction license—a hurdle it is expected to clear in the next few months. The Dec. 19 ruling by Supreme Court Justice Sepúlveda Pertence reversed 11 federal-court injunctions. It breathes new life into a massive project that would involve construction of two systems of canals, tunnels and aqueducts over a total of 386 miles (622 kms) and diversion of roughly 1% of the water from the 1,700-mile (2,700-km) São Francisco River. The water would...
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Colombian environmentalists warn that a major expansion of Bogotá’s El Dorado airport, scheduled to begin in the next few months, could harm an important wetland. The national government says the US$650 million project, which calls for new terminals, runways and other infrastructure, would double passenger capacity to 16 million annually and triple cargo capacity to 1.5 million tons a year. The work, to be done over five years by a consortium of Colombian construction and engineering firms and the Swiss airport operator Flughafen Zurich, will give Colombia Latin America’s second biggest airport in passenger capacity after Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport. It also will fortify Bogotá’s position as the region’s cargo-transport leader. But green activists worry that much of the construction will...
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The World Bank’s announcement of credit and guarantees totaling US$520 million for a massive pulp operation in Uruguay has dealt a blow to neighboring Argentina’s efforts to stop the project on grounds it will cause significant cross-border pollution. The World Bank move, announced Nov. 21, follows a failed Argentine attempt to get the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to intercede. Argentina had requested a court-ordered suspension of plans that at the time called for the construction of two pulp plants across the Uruguay River from the Argentine community of Gualeguaychú. The sponsor of one of those projects, Spain’s Ence, later announced it would shift its planned mill within Uruguay to a site 125 miles (200 kms) south, on the River Plate—a...
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