Peru’s Environment Ministry declared an environmental emergency on Sept. 24 in an area of the lower Marañón River Valley, eight days after an oil spill from a 50-year-old pipeline sent a slick down a tributary and into the river. The spill occurred upstream of the point where the Marañón joins the Ucayali to form the Amazon River in Peru’s northeastern Loreto region. The Environment Ministry said an estimated 2,500 barrels of crude was released and appeared to have affected one bank of the river over a stretch of 13.6 miles (22 kilometers). A commission comprising a dozen national, regional and local government entities was established on Sept. 28 to draw up a plan for the 90-day environmental emergency. The plan will guide spill-related medical attention, environmental-impact monitoaring, risk analysis and pipeline repair. The spill was discovered on the morning of Sept. 16, when residents of...
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A man who attended a gender-reveal party for a forthcoming baby boy faces penalties for dumping dye into a Brazilian River to turn its 18-meter (59-foot) waterfall blue, says the Environmental Secretariat of Mato Grosso state (SEMA). Videos uploaded to social media platforms and broadcast by Brazil’s TV Globo network showed a bright-blue waterfall plunging into a river as partygoers celebrated on the banks next to a large question mark made of pink and blue balloons. The videos were deleted, but not before sparking a backlash on social media from people who saw them. “Congratulations ... you will be the parents of a beautiful environmental crime,” one person commented on Reddit, the New York Post reported. The incident occurred on Sept. 26 at a waterfall on the Queima-Pé, or Burnt Foot, River, the main water source for the nearby town of Tangará da Serra in the...
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The Guatemalan municipality of Asunción Mita held a referendum in September on a Canadian company’s plans to conduct open-pit mining of gold and silver, overwhelmingly rejecting the project over concerns it will pollute local water supplies. Of 8,503 people who cast ballots in the referendum, 88% voted against the project, with 11% favoring open-pit operations at Cerro Blanco mine, which is owned by Canada’s Bluestone Resources. Cerro Blanco was originally planned as an underground mine, but Elevar Resources, Bluestone’s Guatemalan subsidiary, found it would be too difficult to remove gold and silver because of thermal springs it encountered in its excavations. To better access the gold and silver reserves—estimated by Bluestone Resources at 3.1 million ounces and 13.4 million, respectively—the company is pushing for government approval of open-pit operations. But opposition to the project has been strong, with scientists, advocacy groups and local residents concerned...
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Chileans’ decisive rejection in a Sept. 4 plebiscite of a proposed constitution with strong, forward-leaning environmental provisions might not be the last word. There is widespread political agreement that the country must go back to the drawing board and put another, more acceptable constitutional overhaul before the country’s 14 million voters. Right-wing politicians have joined peers across the political spectrum in calling for a redo. Experts believe the public might favor it, too, based on voters’ 78% support, in an Oct. 2020 plebiscite, for the launch of the first attempt. That vote to initiate the original constitutional-convention process came a year after violent protests over social and economic inequalities had brought the country to a standstill, leading to calls for fundamental reforms. In a Sept. 20 speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Chilean President Gabriel Boric appeared to attribute the Sept. 4 result to...
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