the state Codelco, The world’s largest copper producer closed its Ventanas smelter on Wednesday, after six decades of highly polluting activity that transformed the area where it operated along with other industries in the “Chilean Chernobyl”.
During a ceremony, Codelco Ventanas operations manager Pablo Bohler gave the order to “permanently stop the ‘Teniente’ converter furnace.”
Seconds later, the fire was extinguished before the cameras, with which the government of the leftist Gabriel Boric fulfilled its promise to cancel part of Codelco’s operation in Quintero and Puchuncaví, an industrial bay of 50,000 inhabitants, 140 km west of Santiago .
For decades, the plant ejected tons of noxious particles through its chimney.
Even, on the eve of its closure, a hundred students were poisoned by the poor air quality in this area where some 15 companies operate, including coal-fired thermoelectric plants, gas terminals, and crude and copper refineries.
“We have fought for this for years, we are here and we will continue fighting, because this does not end here,” Sabina Vergara, a preschool teacher, told AFP as part of a protest that brought together a hundred demonstrators on the outskirts of the city. plant.
“We have many sick children, the elderly do not leave home. It is very complex,” added the woman, evoking the request of the residents for the definitive closure of polluting companies.
sacrifice zone
Ventanas operated since 1964 as a state foundry center. After its closure, Codelco, which took control of the plant in 2005, will continue refining copper, a much less polluting activity.
“Today the smelter furnaces are turned off, but the conviction to build a more just Chile where all the inhabitants have the right to be able to develop their lives in the conditions that they see fit is not extinguished,” President Boric said in a message pre-recorded.
Part of the 766 workers will be relocated and others will leave their posts with prior agreement with the state company.
“(I have) feelings of sadness, because a part of my life is closed; almost half of my life in this company, in this area where thanks to this work I was able to achieve great things as a person (…), but also with the certainty and positivity of relocating where it comes from,” Francisco Urrutia, a Codelco operator who worked for 13 years at the smelter, told AFP.
Quintero and Puchuncaví have been considered “environmental sacrifice zones” since, in 1958, Chile decided to relegate artisanal fishing and agriculture to turn these towns into an industrial center.
“Codelco is leading the transformations that this industrial pole needs to ensure in order to have a friendly coexistence between industrial activity and the inhabitants,” Codelco’s chairman of the board of directors, Máximo Pacheco, assured at the ceremony.
In addition to respiratory problems, the inhabitants of Quintero and Puchuncaví present “cardiovascular diseases, high levels of infant mortality, unacceptable levels of risk of suffering from cancer in children, and a shorter life expectancy,” according to the UN special rapporteur on human rights. and the environment, David Boyd, who visited Chile at the beginning of May.
