Judge for yourself if you want to take action. In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it. Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income for the area. Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold. The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior (what a surprise eh?). The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulfuric acid in the extraction process. Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.
The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior. Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile. The only place to start changing the world is from here.
We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text,paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book. Please will the 100th person to receive and sign the petition send it to noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the Chilean government.
No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.
We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of the agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of the region.
Signature, City, Country"
If you agree with sentiments, please help with the petition.
I got the same one and forwarded it. The note at the bottom says, when it reaches 100 signatures, forward it to an adress which they show.
I was wondering, sort of a math thing, say the person who drafted it in the first place sends it to ten people, and each recipient sends to ten more, and after about the tenth wave of forwards, there are the same names at the beginning, but different ones at the end. So almost everyone will have their names on many different e-mails when the many final 100-name emails reach the destination.
Weird. I wonder if the destination folks just throw all but one set away.
Posts: 6376 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
As the controversial plan was described by The Santiago Times in March 2005: Canadian international mining company Barrick Gold has plans to relocate three glaciers in the mountain range between Argentina and Chile to gain access to 17.6 million oz. of rich gold and silver deposits.
Chilean farmers and residents of the surrounding Huasco Valley are strongly opposed to the proposal of transferring the ice masses. The glaciers' tributaries are used for irrigation by the farmers, and their removal would threaten the ecological balance and agricultural production of the fertile river valley.
Barrick hopes to transfer 300,000 cubic meters of ice with a 20-hectare surface area from the glaciers that surround the deposits. To mitigate ecological impact and prevent ice from melting, Barrick hopes to transfer the three glaciers, Toro I, Toro II and Esperanza, to an area with similar surface characteristics and elevation by merging the three into a larger glacier, Guanaco, located several kilometers south with a surface area of over 200 hectares.
The proposal is part of the "Pascua Lama" mining treaty, signed by Chile and Argentina in August 2004 after four years of discussion.
Citizens of the Huasco Valley and Region III are taking a stand against the multibillion-dollar foreign company. Last week an environmental group, Valley Defense, organized a demonstration against the project, where close to 200 farmers, community leaders and neighbors marched in protest.
"We don't want to live in an area contaminated by the fault of foreign economic interests," they said.
Raúl Montenegro, Argentine biologist and Alternative Nobel Prize (formally Right Livelihood Award) winner agrees with the farmers.
"The issue is serious in that the project would put pressure on two important river basins which serve as the principle water supply for communities within a semi-arid environment," Montenegro said.
In a letter earlier this year to President Ricardo Lagos, agricultural and community associations of the Huasco Valley voiced their concerns about the mining initiative, insisting that it threatens the ecosystem, agriculture and water quality of the valley, which not only sacrifices agricultural exports and trade agreements, but human health as well.
"If almost 24 hectares of glacier have been exploited solely for the project 's experiments, imagine how much could be destroyed in the end," said Fransisco Bou, leader for the Huasco Valley agriculturists.
There is more discussion at that link.
Posts: 9086 | Location: PA, USA | Registered: 06-05-02
