August 20, 2003

Señor Doctor Ricardo Lagos
Presidente de la República de Chile
Palacio de la Moneda
Santiago, Chile

Fax: 011-56-2 690-4020

Dear President Lagos:

During your recent visit to Canada, a coalition of North American Organizations sent you a letter highlighting our concerns about Canadian Noranda Inc.’s proposal to build an aluminum smelter in Patagonia. We encouraged you to use all of your influence to ensure that this project does not proceed in its current form and destroy one of the last unspoiled treasures of the planet, and a vibrant regional and local economy.

With this in mind, we congratulate you on your recent public statement about the importance of respecting the environment, and the incompatibility of Noranda’s project at Puerto Chacabuco. We were further encouraged by Noranda’s subsequent decision last week to temporarily suspend the project and its withdrawal of its EIA from the Environmental Commission as reported by the Intendencia Regional de Aysén. Noranda’s future plans remain unclear. But we remain steadfast in our beliefs that the project will devastate the local environment and economy regardless of where it is in the Aysén region (or Chile).

This sentiment is based on some examples of Noranda’s track record on the environment. In Canada, Noranda was taken to court in 1988 for violating air pollution laws at its Rouyn-Noranda copper plant, where emissions were reported to be five times higher than the legal amount. A year later, Noranda received the maximum fine for failing to install equipment to clean its emissions and for surpassing the legal amounts. Despite this, between 1990 and 2000 arsenic emissions from the same plant actually increased from 45 tons to 60.2 tons a year, even though the company had set a goal of reducing emissions to 25 tons. Arsenic, lead and beryllium emissions are having serious impacts on the health of local workers and their families. In the United States in 2000, Noranda had to pay $120,000 for improperly disposing of hazardous waste and failing to clean up oil spills at its aluminium plant in New Madrid, Missouri. In Chile, in April 2001, the Antofogasta Health Services filed a complaint to the Alto Norte Foundry because excessive emissions of sulphurous oxide were causing respiratory irritation among the local population.  The list of harms caused by Noranda in Chile must not be allowed to grow.

We support any steps your government takes to continue to stimulate economic opportunity for Chileans in a manner that is sustainable in the long term for communities, the environment and the economy. The proposed Alumysa project is not the kind of investment that will reach these goals anywhere in Chile.

We applaud the courageousness of your Administration in recognizing the importance of a healthy environment for people, and hope that the Alumysa project will not be revived elsewhere in the Aysén region.

Yours sincerely,

 
Fraser Reilly-King
Coordinator,
NGO Working Group on EDC
Canada

Joan Kuyek
National Coordinator
MiningWatch Canada
Canada

Randi Spivak
American Lands Alliance
USA

Glenn Switkes,
Director, Latin America Program
International Rivers Network,
Berkeley California

Joel Reynolds, Senior Attorney
Natural Resources Defense Council
United States