Poisoned city fights to save its children

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Observer/Guardian

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



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.




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

---

Peru's President, Alan Garcia

[Judi Lynn]

1. Information on the American owner of the plant, Ira Rennert

Rennert's company, the Renco Group, is essentially a holding group that owns other companies, such as WCI Steel,
Doe Run, and used to own AM General, manufacturer of the legendary Hummer. Ira Rennert, bought AM General for $133 million in 1992. Ronald Perelman, a Wall Street corporate raider, bought a 70 percent interest in AM General of South Bend, Indiana. The deal reportedly cost close to US$1,000,000,000. The company makes the military Humvee, as well as the Hummer H1 and H2 sold by General Motors. The Renco Group has been criticized for their record on pollution and worker safety.
(snip)

The United States Environmental Protection Agency once placed Renco Group business holdings 10th on the nation's largest polluter list.<1>

In 2001, the Justice Department and EPA took action against Renco, filing suit against the company. The agencies demanded nearly $1 billion in fines, alleging MagCorp (a Renco Metals Inc. subsidiary) dumped toxic waste in ditches and ponds on the Great Salt Lake, Utah.<8> The suit claimed PCB-laced sludge and dust choked the plant's plumbing, wastewater ponds, landfill and ditches, where contaminants were 12 times the allowed limit for accidental release.<8> MagCorp maintained it was exempt from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which requires companies to monitor certain kinds of hazardous waste.<8>
(snip)

Peru
Doe Run, Peru, (a Renco Group holding) operates a smelting plant in La Oroya, Peru, where many of the same environmental violations that were present in Herculaneum, Missouri, are being visited on La Oroya's 12,000 children.<11> The Blacksmith Institute has placed La Oroya on its list of ten most polluted places in the world, along with Chernobyl, Ukraine.<12>

The Peruvian government originally sold the smelter to Doe Run in 1997. The site was already contaminated, but as part of the purchase agreement Doe Run Peru agreed to remedy a list of pollution-related problems by January 2007. Doe Run Peru couldn't meet the deadline and asked for and received a four year extension. In 2005, the company claimed to have cut air pollution by 25 percent and water pollution by 90 percent. Doe Run officials say they have spent more than $107 million to bring the smelter into compliance with Peruvian regulations.<12>

Meanwhile, thousands of children in La Oroya are suffering the effects of lead poisoning as hundreds of tons of toxins continue to spew from the smelting plant. A recent study by St. Louis University scientists found that 97 percent of children in La Oroya suffer from mental and physical deficiencies related to their exposure to polluted air.<12>
(snip)

Ira Rennert and his wife, Ingeborg, contribute to numerous charitable causes, especially those centered around the Jewish faith. Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel has called Rennert, "a deeply, deeply religious man".

Amongst other charitable giving, Ira and Ingeborg Rennert have:

• Endowed a $2.5 million chair in Jewish studies at Barnard College
  
• Donated $5 million to establish the Wiesel Center at Boston University
  
• Given more than $1 million to the World Trade Center Memorial
  
• Established the Ira Leon Rennert Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at New York University
  
• Endowed the Ira Rennert Professor of Business at Columbia University
  
• Founded the Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University
  
• Helped restore the Western Heritage Wall in Jerusalem (the visitor's center is called The Ingeborg and Ira
• Leon Rennert Hall of Light)
  
• Supported Lincoln Center with a $250,000 donation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Rennert





Ira Rennert, Ira Rennert's house

[acmavm]

2. Shit, always a US company owned by some greedy capitalists.

Shit.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Is it just this guy, or are they ALL this dirty? The stats look godawful.

What kills me is that I've never heard about this place before tonight, when I saw the first article. How many other places all over the world ARE THERE? They have, obviously, the full force of right-wing idiot Republican pResidents behind them, ready to invade any country anywhere and murder as many of its people as possible, when it tries to compel these huge company owners to do the right thing for their people!

Most pResidents seem happy as clams to sell the poor of their country down the river: let them toil 16 hours a day, with their wives in banana plantations, copper mines, and hey, they can bring their children, too! Why not make it a family occassion, as in Central America, where Chiquita has 8 and 10 year old children working. They will work for half the salary of the parents. Think of the money that saves! And the savings don't really get passed on to you, the consumer.

Screw that! It leaves MORE, MORE, MORE for the fat piece of crap business owner!
From an article I saw a couple of years too late just a moment ago:

How can Marco become a great doctor if he has lead poisoning?

Marco <1> dreams of becoming a doctor someday. The only problem is that 99.9% of the children tested in his hometown of La Oroya, Peru have excessive lead levels, according to a recent Government study <2> and Marco has 5 times the maximum permissible level. Lead poisoning can cause learning problems, retarded growth, hyperactivity, kidney and liver disease, and neurological problems that are the stuff of nightmares for parents everywhere <3>. In La Oroya, the lead levels are so high that many children are born with lead poisoning, which is transmitted from mother to child through the placenta during pregnancy.

Marco’s hometown is the site of a large metal smelter owned by the Doe Run Company of St. Louis, Missouri. Each day, the smelter puts out more than 1000 tons of toxic emissions over the city. When Doe Run purchased the smelter in 1997, it promised to clean things up by January 2007, and the Peruvian Government approved the sale based on the Company’s promise. But now the Company has announced that it will not keep its promise and is threatening to close down the smelter if the Government does not provide it with a 5 year extension-- despite extremely favorable mineral prices <4>.
(snip)

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press821.htm





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rennert's house in Sagaponack, New York

Rennert, Mrs. Rennert

Some Rennert pretenders:

[Judi Lynn]

3. PERU: Pollution Emergency Plan Instead of Real Action for La Oroya

PERU: Pollution Emergency Plan Instead of Real Action for La Oroya
By Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Aug 10 (Tierramérica) - Far from halting the source that is poisoning the Andean city of La Oroya, which is home to the Doe Run smelting complex, the Peruvian government ordered a contingency plan for the days when air pollution is worst, as if it were dealing with a natural disaster.

The Contingency Plan for States of Alert will be presented Aug. 10 by the government's national environmental council, CONAM, which approved it Jul. 18 to protect the 35,000 inhabitants of La Oroya from the sulphur dioxide, lead and cadmium emissions from the Doe Run smokestacks.

The plan is the result of two years of debates involving citizen groups, non-governmental organisations and the state agencies in charge of carrying it out, as well as representatives of the company, which will provide much of the financing.

La Oroya, 180 kilometres east of Lima, is one of the country's 13 most polluted cities, the government said in 2001. The New York-based Blacksmith Institute in 2006 included it in a list of the 10 worst cases in the world.
(snip)

Once a state of alert is ordered, it will be recommended that the most vulnerable -- children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with respiratory or cardiovascular illnesses -- should not be outdoors between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm local time, the worst period of the day for exposure.

Doors and windows of homes, schools and hospitals should be closed, and food sold on the street should be covered.

The population in general should cover mouth and nose with scarves and handkerchiefs when outside. The idea of facemasks was ruled out because "people don't want images that further dramatise the situation," said Rojas.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38854

[brentspeak]

4. Force the company's entire executive staff to live in the polluted compound

Let's see how they like it.

[Judi Lynn]

5. It would be pure perfection to follow their daily lives for a week as they attempt

to follow a simple routine in that hell.

I'm sure many, if not almost all of those poor people are living on land their parents and grandparents owned so long ago, before the plant was built, and absolutely cannot afford to move anywhere and buy any other land, and start all over again. (The land itself now is probably worthless due to the toxic conditions, and couldn't be sold.)

Peru's government doesn't mind blowing up the citizens when they are deemed to be causing trouble, due to pure desperation, but God forbid any of the big dollars coming in to grease the palms of the grifters in office should ever miss a beat.

By the way, it would be wrong to not point out something POSITIVE! Look how lovely the latest FOUNTAINS are which President Alan Garcia arranged for installation, only last month.

Story: http://www.livinginperu.com/news-4357-travel-tourism-new-fountains-lima-peru-recognized-guinness-records



Who would not just swoon!

[Judi Lynn]

6. Do you have 5 minutes 16 seconds to see a video on this disaster?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6WXa9aKrM&

On edit:
The video said that when the monster plant was state-owned, Peru had planned to build THREE OXYGEN PLANTS to convert sulphur dioxide to sulphuric acid so it wouldn't get into the atmosphere.

They claim they allowed it to be privatized when the buyers promised to make these adjustments themselves, then they DIDN'T. Imagine that!

Life expectancy there is 56 to 60.

8,000 pounds of lead released into the air daily, 3,000 pounds of arsenic, 1,100 TONS of Sulphur dioxide, daily.

Here's a very superficial CBS clip on La Oroya:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1139595105118746209&q=La+Oroya%2C+Peru&total=33&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

[phusion]

8. Thank you Judi Lynn

for your continued attention to Latin America. You're a kindred spirit. :toast:

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thank you! It really gets you wild when you realize how many years you can live here

without ever hearing one WORD about what has been going on ANYWHERE in Latin America and the Caribbean, other than occassional confusing sudden splashy, wildly dramatic, and bewildering photos, showing people throwing fits somewhere, and they always leave you with the impression Latin Americans are simply all nutty, grouchy, hot-tempered, and insanely jealous of Americans: that's why they rush out and attack the cars of important, God-fearing American officials when they visit them. :eyes:

You'd almost get the feeling we've been completely duped by our own corporate media, wouldn't you? They are simply too good to lower themselves to EVER bothering us with the details of what unrighteous deception and violence is being conducted in our own names, and with our own tax dollars against people who have NEVER injured any part of this country, nor intended to.....



Nixon's sensational triumphal visit to Caracas.



_{George W Bush's} ambassador Brownfield's
hasty retreat from a little league baseball
game, where he had worn out his welcome, and
was escorted away by citizens on motorcycles,
lobbing fruits, eggs, and vegetables at him.
Shot through the back window of his US taxpayer
provided limousine, on the way to a place where
it could be cleaned off at the expense of US
taxpayer hard-earned, and quickly taken dollars!

[burrowowl]

7. K&R

[Pachamama]

11. Wow! I just got chills! I remember on one of my visits to Peru to go into the Andes and visit a

farm in the town of "Ninacuco" where collective farmers were growing "Maca", we had to pass through an area that looked dead and barren. I remember sitting in the Jeep we were in and looking down at the river and seeing a yellow green (almost glowing!) liquid pouring down into the river....As we drove through this town and I looked at the big smokestack spewing, I felt anger and I remember turning to my friend Sergio and asking him about it and he said it was the worst polluter in Peru and it was awful.

It was this place. I will never forget it. If there is an evil place where the greed of companies taking advantage of the poor people in Peru who work for them as they destroy their environment and their health, it is this place.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Had no idea a DU'er had ever been anywhere near this area. It does look as bad as your description

in the photos. Knowing the life expectancy is only 56 to 60 there is hard to accept! Can't imagine how it hard it must have hit you.

Any set of conditions leading to actually shortening the lives of the people who depend on that land is unacceptable. How can these guys manage to turn off their consciences like that!

Thanks for your comments. Always memorable.

[Pachamama]

13. Believe me, had I any idea about this place before we had gotten there, I wouldn't have wanted to be

anywhere near it! But unfortunately, the road from Lima to this particular region I was going to only goes through the valley and mountain area where that horrible place is located. I knew when I saw this place that it was bad and I will never forget seeing that "liquid" pouring into the river. I also remember that further downstream was a reservoir/lake that was just "dead". Interestingly enough, when I was there, it was in 1999, and according to the CBS report I just viewed in this thread, the plant had been sold to Doe Run the American company in 1997, so it was being run by them at the time I saw it.

It's interesting how DU has such a variety of people with mixes of backgrounds that you can find people who have been to such places. Believe me, this though was not a visit that had been planned. I couldn't have even told you the name of that place until you posted it and saw the picture of the story you posted and went on to the internet and looked up the town.

I just finished reading the second book by John Perkins, "The Secret History of the American Empire". John is a friend of mine who I spent much time with down in the Amazon (mainly Equador). I didn't at that time know about his past life as an "Economic Hitman", only his work environmentally and with the indigenous tribes. He talks about how the whole system works in 3rd world countries economically and this awful Smelt in La Oroyo is a perfect example of how "we" as a country, have stakes in all these countries where we basically are raping their resources for our benefit while essentially killing these people and their environment. Disgusting and shameful. I pray that there is a day where our Empire no longer is able to do this to anyone or any nation.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Was wondering, after reading your comments, if the American owner was running the smelter

at the time you passed through the valley. So it looks as if he had been reaping his profits already for two years by then!

You notice he seems to give a lot to his chosen charities, and they all loudly trumpet his name, don't they? What a humanitarian.

Thanks for the reminder to those of us who haven't taken the time to read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and nudging others of us to also get busy to read "The Secret History of the American Empire." It's so important to plunge in and start overcoming the complete vacuum we've been handed as actual information on Latin America by our own public school backgrounds and our daily corporate media. They only refer to Latin America when they've got some propaganda they think they should hand us in order to get our support for illegitimate, completely underhanded war on the ordinary citizens of countries south of our border with Mexico. Gotta get a whole lot of hostility going in order to get the appropriations for death squads, building new bases, sending "advisors," etc., etc.

Here's a BBC sketchy "timeline" for Peru. I noted at the time you mentioned, Fujimori was the President. Also saw there have been 4,000 disappeared people since 1980. That's a whole area which has been a big secret here, also!

2000 17 November - Peruvian human rights ombudsman's office says 4,000 people had "disappeared" since 1980 in war against left-wing rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1224690.stm

[ohio2007]

15. They should be lucky they don't live in Iran

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c88_1186101372

Iran pollutes Ahwazi homeland
The Ahwazi Arabs are one of the most economically and politically marginalised people in the Middle East. Many rely on fishing for an income, but Iran's environmental destruction of their occupied homeland means that fish stocks are depleted and the indigenous population suffers from diseases such as cholera.

[Judi Lynn]

16. You didn't seem able to pick up on the fact the owner of this vile filth is AMERICAN. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

17. Toxic clouds hang over Peruvian town (polution caused by American-owned smelter)

Toxic clouds hang over Peruvian town
U.S. company bought mine tied to poisonings
By Rebecca Howard



Updated: 9:52 a.m. CT Feb 9, 2004
LA OROYA, Peru - Standing outside his adobe house overlooking the huge American-owned smelter in this small Andean town, Pablo Fabian watches children play beneath a smoke cloud containing toxic lead, sulfur dioxide, cadmium and arsenic.

His hands tremble when he talks about his own children. Two of them are lethargic and have trouble concentrating, symptoms of lead poisoning. Fabian blames the smelter and is determined to protect his newborn baby girl.
(snip)

Those findings led to a deal between Doe Run and Missouri’s government requiring the company to offer to buy 160 nearby homes. The buyout, which has yet to be completed, is one factor that may have helped drop the percentage of children with high levels of lead to 17 percent last year.

Leslie Warden, a leader in a Herculaneum activist group, visited last year to see Doe Run operations in Peru.

“They have defined a new low in my mind,” she said after her stay in La Oroya.
(snip/)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4145692/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

La Oroya is a city in Junín Region, Peru. It is located at around 11°31′60″S, 75°54′0″W, at an altitude of about 4000 m. It was named in 2006 in a list of the 10 most polluted places on earth by the Blacksmith Institute, a US-based environmental charity <1>. Studies carried out by the Director General of Environmental Health in Peru in 1999 showed that ninety-nine percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable amounts. The drinking water of La Oroya has been shown to contain 50 per cent more lead than the levels recommended by the World Health Organisation. These studies have also shown high levels of contamination of the air with 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe <2>.

These high levels of pollution are most likely caused by the presence of large scale refinery and smelting operations, a majority of which are owned and operated by the Doe Run Company which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US corporation, Renco Group Inc. Doe Run is a major employer in the city and has used this powerful position to mitigate effective opposition to its poisoning of the air and water. This has involved high level lobbying with the cities ex-mayor and union leaders, who have successfully forced the Peruvian government to drop plans for pollution reduction measures <3>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Oroya

[catgirl]

18. This is terrible.

And what can be done about it? The Peruvian government is involved and our
"president" is thoughtless and corrupt. So we have to wait for the next elections
before anything can be done? This guy should be rotting in jail.