From the high terrace of Katta Alonso, 70, you can see the horseshoe-shaped bay of Quintero-Puchuncaví (pop. 40,000; Valparaíso, Chile) from end to end. The front yard of the quaint home is the Pacific Ocean and the back yard is an orchard with quince, apple and peach trees. But she doesn’t eat the produce that surrounds her. He doesn’t dare. Don’t trust. And it is that they are the fruit of the sea and the land from one of the five Sacrificial Zones in Chile, as the areas are called where the massive concentration of polluting industries is affecting the health of the community. “Our soils are riddled with volatile organic compounds and our fish with heavy metals. If I want seafood, I buy the frozen ones at the supermarket,” says the President of Women of Slaughter Zones, in her hoarse voice, the result of an ongoing respiratory illness.
Alonso lives in the town of Ventanas with about 2,500 inhabitants in the municipality of Puchuncaví, 150 kilometers north of Santiago. It is part of a coastal route with colorful low-rise towns that usually live off tourism, fishing and agriculture. But the Ventanas thermal baths break with the aesthetics of bays and cultivated fields. A 158-meter tall, non-working chimney — from Codelco, the world’s leading copper producer — houses a mid-century industrial center that has expanded and diversified over the decades. The 16 companies that have their facilities concentrated about three miles from the bay include thermal power plants, oil refiners and chemical product distributors.
The aerial view shows Codelco Ventanas’ main chimney, which has become the symbol of the “sacrificial zones”. Cristian Soto Quiroz
On May 31, Codelco closed its Ventanas copper smelter. The first shutdown of a state copper mill was in response to a historic lawsuit from local residents over a series of massive poisonings in the community. The plant was one of the main sources of sulfur dioxide emissions. The decision by Gabriel Boric’s government and Codelco’s board of directors was widely welcomed by environmentalists and raised high expectations. But even a month after the closure, despite the consensus on the importance of the measure, reality continues to hit residents’ lives hard. Here, in this place, people see the closure as just a first step in restoring the bay’s decontaminated sky, sea and air.
“The story was that Codelco was going to close and this would be Eden. But they closed, we had a week and a half to monitor the establishments, and yet more than 75 cases of drunken students in the schools were registered every day,” stresses Carlos Muñoz, spokesman for the Center for Parents of Quinteros Subsidized Schools, referring on the pollutants of the other companies that operate. “Schools have turned into a place where at 11am you don’t know what the hell is going to happen. The teachers have become experts in psychology and smell. The first preventive measure is intuition. “It smells,” they say. We look at the ventilation status of the bay to estimate if we will have an incident the next day. It’s almost like sailing when you look at the stars. “We are the same as in 2018,” adds Muñoz, referring to the nearly 1,400 patients treated for poisoning in less than two months five years ago at Quintero Hospital.
“The surveillance systems in some schools tell us the presence of benzene, among other things, which is a carcinogen that severely weakens the immune system,” says Muñoz, a father of three children who got drunk without knowing what and who they never got to follow-up requested. “We recently managed to classify symptoms such as vomiting, dizziness and muscle numbness as gas poisoning. But we don’t know which gases,” says Alonso.
Carlos Muñoz, spokesman for the Center for Parents of Subsidized Private Schools, stands in front of the Alonso de Quintero school. Cristian Soto Quiroz
Identifying the volatile pollutants emitted by the industrial complex’s businesses is the flag raised by fishermen, activists, teachers and merchants. Also the Supreme Court, which in 2019 ordered immediate compliance with these and 14 other measures in the Bay of Quintero-Puchuncaví. Almost four years later, the lack of action is evident. The Ministry of the Environment assures EL PAÍS that the implementation of the public air quality monitoring network will start in the fourth quarter of 2023 in the municipalities of Concón, Quintero and Puchuncaví. There will be 14 new stations; Three of these will have continuous monitoring of all regulated pollutants.
The Department highlights the inclusion of VOC monitoring for “two to 12 carbons, with a particular focus on BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene)”. The primary quality standard for benzene has recently been approved and the secondary quality standard is pending approval, “which could determine the saturation of the area with some of these new regulated pollutants. In this case, mitigation mechanisms must be applied,” adds the portfolio manager of Minister Maisa Rojas.
Businesses came to the Bay with promises of helping to develop the region. According to a report published in 2018 by the National Institute for Human Rights, only 6.6% of the population of Quintero and Puchuncaví work in the industrial sector. The multidimensional poverty rate in Puchuncaví reaches 28%, 10 points higher than the national average; and 32% of households do not have access to basic services, which is 18 points above the average. “Growth has never gotten that far. We don’t even have a sewage treatment plant. The droppings end up on the beach. “We’re talking about an OECD country that should meet WHO-recommended standards,” says Regional Councilor Carlos Vega — a regional government official with regulatory and supervisory powers — who, like his grandfather, has worked at sea all his life.
Walking along the coast, Vega shows the restaurants and houses where his relatives lived. All buildings are deserted. News of the poisoning brought tourism to a halt and wealthy residents moved elsewhere. Traders from the nearby resorts of Maitencillo, Cachagua and Zapallar stopped buying from the bay’s fishermen, although some still manage to sell their locomotives or hake for a third of their former price. “The new neighbors are poorer and the tourists who arrive have very low incomes. “Ventanas impoverished,” Vega laments with the sea in the background. Despite the health crisis, the city does not have its own hospital and while Quintero’s is nearby, it has a health center of complexity class 4, the lowest category.
The desalination plant, the new project in the bay
Vega occasionally visits the entrance of the Bahía Narau Fishermen’s Union at the entrance to the Aguas Pacífico desalination plant, across the highway from the industrial complex. Dozens of fishermen have been trying for two months to prevent the Aconcagua project, which received the 50-year sea concession, from proceeding. “That’s the icing on the cake. “We don’t want more companies to come, we want those who start to leave our bay and reclaim it,” they explain at night at a stove that heats teapots with coffee. They fear that the salt they emit will affect the marine ecosystem and that they will transport the water to other places when the area is hit by drought.
Mauricio Alegría, director of sustainability at Aguas Pacífico, explains via Zoom that the project complies with environmental regulations and that the impacts “are not significant and are limited to a limited area”. The emissary – the pipe through which the salt will be ejected into the sea – is more than 750 meters long and the exit surface will be six meters. “After this section, the same salt concentrations remain in the Pacific Ocean. There are no chemical or temperature changes,” he emphasizes. Twice a year, they will submit a monitoring plan to the Chilean Navy to address environmental impacts on the marine ecosystem.
Fishing boats in Ventanas Bay. The activity for this type of boat is almost nil.Cristian Soto Quiroz
The majority of the water will go to the metro area on behalf of its main customer, Anglo American. Alegría confirms that they are entering into an agreement with the Puchuncaví localities to provide water of subsidized value through rural services. Ventanas is not included as it is part of a concession owned by Esval, Valparaíso’s wastewater company. In negotiations with the fishermen, Aguas Pacífico offers them training and project development. They have a budget of 3,000 million pesos ($3.7 million) for the first 10 years. “We are also working on the transfer of the patent for Aguas Pacífico de Las Condes [un municipio acomodado de la capital] to Puchuncavi. This is a direct benefit for the development of the community,” emphasizes Alegría. One of the activists’ biggest complaints is that the industry in the Bay is not paying for the patent in the region.
The Terram Foundation, dedicated to conducting studies and promoting sustainable development, defends the industrial park freeze. “It is unacceptable that, in view of the existing pollution of the air, water and soil, new projects are still being approved for evaluation,” criticized its director Flavia Liberona in El PAÍS. President Boric, in the recent public bill before Congress, mentioned the commitment to green hydrogen in cities like Quintero so that “they can close their thermoelectric power plants without losing jobs and improving their quality of life”. In 2021, GNL Quintero, Enagas and Acciona’s Bahía Quintero Green Hydrogen Project failed the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA) administrative approval phase.
According to this newspaper, after the rejection of the SEA, the companies GNL Quintero, Enagas and Acciona withdrew from the evaluation process. But the spirit of new industrial projects is haunting the bay. “It’s unfair that we carry this burden when it can be done in different parts of the country. “This amount is impossible,” says Alonso on his terrace overlooking the industrial cordon.
The wide panoramic view allows you to see the remains of the former spa town, known for its calm waters due to the shape of the bay. In one corner stand the fishermen with their boats, who go out to sea when the wind is blowing to look for and sell fish and shellfish. In the other corner, sprawling piers and massive infrastructure jut out into the shore. The view of the quaint home is a postcard of Ventana’s past and present.