While most of the community was resting and spending happy moments with their families for the Christmas holiday, and just when fishermen from La Carioca were preparing to set up their small boats to meet the "spot" of mullet and bring sustenance to their homes, yesterday afternoon, December 25, at approximately 3:30 p.m., a new act of environmental neglect occurred. The focus: the same sector of La Carioca, where Petroindustrial discharges thousands of liters of water with hydrocarbon odors daily and where a similar situation occurred at the beginning of August. On this occasion, as on previous occasions, those who raised the alarm were the residents, when supposedly the Refinery has personnel that we ALL pay, dedicated to these activities.
The calls for attention from dozens of media outlets, the thousands of requests from citizens to take concrete actions, and the full knowledge of the situation by ALL the control authorities did not prevent a situation with similar characteristics and damage, and even greater in proportion, from occurring again for the second time this year.
On that occasion (in August), Mrs. Noralma Zambrano, Governor of the Province, mentioned to Eduardo Hesney of Diario Super that “things were being magnified”; however, in the face of strong public pressure, the Environmental Department of Santa Elena fined the state refinery nearly 12,000 dollars (ridiculous according to environmentalists, since it is almost 4 times less than the fine imposed on Aguapen for organic contamination, a company several times smaller than the manager of the Refinery; and given that Petroindustrial refines about 30,000 barrels of oil per day, the “fine” at current prices represents only approximately 200 barrels). The fine is currently being contested by the state refinery.
A team from that department, headed by Daniel Castillo, its main one, arrived at the source of contamination around 5 pm where they proceeded to "practice a contingency plan" that basically consisted only of applying dispersant; when a correct contingency plan should have included other measures such as the isolation of the hydrocarbon stain, among others. Neither firefighters nor any other security team arrived; although people from the Risk Secretariat were present. Lack of coordination, lack of an effective contingency plan or Christmas festivities?
Given this situation, we share the questions of people on our social networks, which can be summarized in one that literally says:
«Who has more weight... good living? Mother Earth enshrined in the new constitution of the revolution?... or strategic resources? Does the Ministry of the Environment really have the capacity to confront the Ministry of Energy, to take concrete actions and demand that the law be complied with? It is inevitable and urgent to think of a post-oil economic model. That is revolution. Don't say it's not easy, don't say you found a country in ruins. Because nothing you do is done for free, or by volunteers, or out of good will. Here we are talking about a lot of money, a lot of money in Carondelet, a lot of money in the Amazon, a lot of money in our beloved and plundered Sumpa Peninsula» (Erin Lurrain).
At the moment the oil slick is heading north. We were told that at around 5 am today it passed in front of Punta Blanca. At the moment the slick is more than a kilometer long.
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