environment

Discrepancies uncovered in sand mine EIA

Gethsa Internacional is allegedly extracting sand outside of the area indicated in its environmental assessment.

Communities near the San Miguel mine site complain that the company’s destructive activities in the area.

la prensa

out of place: Gethsa Internacional’s actual sand mines are 3.5 kilometers from where it conducted its environmental impact assessment in 1999.1134568

Sand mining company Gethsa Internacional is under scrutiny for an erroneous Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) it submitted in 1999 as a requirement to extract continental sand in an area to the east of the capital city.

The EIA was completed in Carriazo, but the company has been conducting its extractions in San Miguel, some 3.5 kilometers away, a fact that has only now surfaced following recent community protests over alleged ecological damage caused by the mines.

“The EIA says the project is located in a community that doesn’t correspond, just as we verified in the field,” said the technical evaluation report prepared by the Department of Technical Assessment and Environmental Protection of ANAM, the country’s chief environmental authority.

Elio Álvarez, director of Assessment and Environmental Protection, received the report on July 23, 1999, several days after ANAM had already given the green light to Gethsa to begin mining in the area. As head of that department, Álvarez was responsible for deciding whether the project met the environmental requirements.

In fact, even Gethsa Internacional’s then legal representative, George Ethier Hoos, was notified of ANAM’s approval of the cmpany’s EIA prior to the field report’s arrival on Álvarez’s desk.

Javier Torres, a former official of the Anam, who was part of the board that granted approval of the EIA, drafted a personal report of his assessment of the project on June 21, 1999. Following a tour of the mine site, he wrote that “[the company] must leave a buffer strip of at least 150 meters near all sources of natural water in the area ...”

That requirement appeared as 100 meters, however, in the ANAM report giving approval to the company’s EIA.

Torres, who was terminated from ANAM in April 2000, was later hired by Gethsa Internacional as a technical advisor on January 30, 2001.

“I am a professional and I have to eat. What’s more, [Gethsa] is not the only company I work with, I work for another 10,” he told La Prensa in defense of his move.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Anguizola, former director general of ANAM, said he, too, noticed discrepancies in the EIA. “There was no consistency among the documents of the mine and its location, which showed that the mines would be elsewhere.”

Anguizola said he had recommended that officials of the General Accounting Office not to endorse the assessment. “I understand that actions were taken to that effect, but I do not know what exactly happened next,” he added.

The company indicated that it has since updated its EIA, though official sources from the Ministry of Trade and Commerce denied that they had received any such proposal.

Attempts to contact Gethsa representatives were unsuccessful.