"Much of the Commonwealth of Tortel believe that this project will be very damaging if it is to materialize"

Tortel Mayor, presenting the observations of your municipality environmental impact assessment (EIA) of HidroAysén, said that "much of the community of Tortel, who were born in this land, we believe this project will be very harmful if you get to realize, in cultural matters, on environmental issues, the impact will be tremendous. "

The mayor, who arrived last week to Coyhaique to present the document to the Environmental Assessment Service, reaffirmed that "it is a bad project for the region." In this regard, he recalled the initiatives of this type have been developed in other communities the country, as the Upper Bío Bío, "where today there is great poverty, the progress that was promised at that time never came, and still has not arrived, and it will not come either because companies were removed there and we do not want to happen the same with our people of Patagonia. "

The observations

The document, which reflects the main points, questions the impact on the sector Salton Baker River where HidroAysén plans to build the wall of the central Baker 2, noting that "if it affects the tourism product of the loss of an attractive specific can not be pinpointed as compensation landscape repair or conservation area is intended to offset other impacts. "He adds that" to improve a circuit that would lose its main attraction corresponds to a mitigation measure is not a compensation, mitigation refers to dampen the effects, compensation to compensate for irreparable harm, as that would cause the loss of the Baker River bounding. Thus, the holder is required to complement the specific measures to compensate for the loss of tourist attraction which are complementary to mitigation measures. "

Another observation relates to the extraction of aggregates, where the company is asked to "comply with the request made on numerous occasions by the DGA, which until now has not been considered in defining the course of rivers considering 100 years of return. This is particularly important for proper risk assessment product GLOF events and other large floods, which could be increased if flooded areas of aggregate extraction. "

Also, speaking of the company's relationship with the people directly affected who live in the community, in order to avoid an unequal relationship between the parties.

On Monday April 25th is the deadline to have the utilities to submit comments, after which it is most likely to develop the Consolidated Evaluation Report, on which Environmental Evaluation Committee should vote before the May 16 EIA approval or rejection.