Alcoa Razes Rain Forest in Court Case Led by Brazil Prosecutors

[phantom power]

For Bentes and thousands of others in the Juruti region of Para whose livelihood depends on wildlife and plants, everything changed in 2006. That’s when New York-based Alcoa Inc., the world’s second-largest primary aluminum producer, started to bulldoze a 56-kilometer (35-mile) swath of the rain forest across hundreds of families’ properties to build a railway.

This cleared corridor, 100 meters (109 yards) wide, will lead to a mine that will chew up 10,500 hectares (25,900 acres) of virgin jungle over three decades.

More than half of the mine will lie inside a forest that by Brazilian federal law is supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents. By year’s end, Alcoa says, the railway will transport 7,000 tons a day of bauxite, the dark red ore that’s used to make aluminum, from the mine to a port on the Amazon River.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=aEmubrLsu.ro

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Meanwhile, in the States enough aluminum cans are thrown away

each day - into land fills and dumps and lakes and streams - to build a 747.

[angelshare2]

2. Not that much.

25,900 acres isn't that much when you stack it in a row.