Peru cancels permit for US-owned smelter over pollution plan

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France Presse

Peru cancels permit for US-owned smelter over pollution plan
… .18 mins ago

LIMA (AFP) – Peru canceled the operating license of US-based Doe Run for a large smelter complex in La Oroya after the firm failed to meet a deadline for submitting a new environmental protection plan, President Alan Garcia said Wednesday.

"The deadline has passed for Doe Run to resolve the issue of environmental contamination," Garcia told lawmakers during his annual independence day message.

"The law will be strictly enforced and the operating permit canceled."

Doe Run Peru's sprawling metallurgical complex was shut down a year ago as the company, a unit of US-based Renco Group, suffered from weak demand due to the global economic crisis.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100728/ts_alt_afp/peruusminingenvironment

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Poisoned city fights to save its children
Families in a Peruvian valley choked by toxic gas from a smelter are taking on a US metals giant

Hugh O'Shaughnessy in La Oroya, Peru
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer

http://image.guardian.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2007/08/11/peru10b.jpg

Children wearing masks play near the towering chimneys
of Peru's La Oroya refinery and metals processing
plant. Photograph: Reuters

At an altitude of 13,000ft the Andean air is clear. A plume of white smoke rises from the chimney at the La Oroya smelter, hard at work refining arsenic and metals such as lead, cadmium and copper. But today the company is not discharging any gases over this city in central Peru. 'It's a nice day, so the company won't be letting off any gases,' says Hugo Villa, a neurologist at the local hospital. 'They keep the worst emissions to overcast days or after dark.'

When the gases are released, they make this one of the most polluted places on the planet, with La Oroya ranking alongside Chernobyl for environmental devastation, according to a US think-tank, the Blacksmith Institute.

The company is a US corporation, Renco Doe Run. The gases are the product from the main smelter a mile or two down the valley. The high mountains around keep out the cleansing winds, meaning that airborne metals are concentrated in the valley. Neither humans nor nature can escape the company's outpourings of poisons. And, despite evidence that gases have been behind the premature deaths of workers and residents young and old, the business-oriented, pro-US government of President Alan Garcia is too afraid of foreign investors to do anything about it.

Now, however, the townspeople, once muted by their worries about losing their jobs with the valley's biggest employer, are turning their attention towards Ira Rennert, Renco's proprietor.

More:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147039,00.html

http://www.davidrochkind.com.nyud.net:8090/content/photos/peru001A.jpg
Videos available at YouTube in any search for "Doe Run" Peru.

[babydollhead]

1. my son is going to Peru this summer

[Renew Deal]

5. Did he smelt it?

If he smelt it, he dealt it. :D

[sinkingfeeling]

2. That's excellent news. Now they need to make them clean it up! Peru is a

beautiful, but extremely poor country.

[judesedit]

3. Good for Peru. Hold the U.S. corporations accountable. They don't care about destroying your

environment and can't do it here in the U.S. anymore without repercussions. On top of that, they outsource jobs, then pay your workers diddly squat, and don't pay their fair share of taxes. I hope other countries follow in your footsteps.

[bvar22]

4. The Populist Reforms sweeping across Latin America...

...give me hope for the World.

We can have those reforms here in the USA as soon as the American Working Class & The Poor (Democrat & Republican) realize we have more in common with each other than we have in common with the Ruling Class in either Political Party.

VIVA Democracy!
I hope we get some here.

[lunasun]

6. I agree Latin America at least seems to have some real movement nt