The governor of the Valparaíso region, Rodrigo Mundaka, addressed the decarbonization process that the Government seeks to promote and the decision of the National Copper Corporation (Codelco), whose board approved moving towards the closure of the Ventana smelter, located in Quintero, due to pollution episodes. In this regard, he stated that “graduality must be reformulated.”
“The government program proposed ending the sacrifice zones and starting a process of decarbonizing the energy matrix (…) today, thinking about gradualism when we have situations of this nature, with such a high impact on the lives of the people, I think we definitely have to reformulate the issue of gradualness,” Mundaca said in conversation with CNNChile.
Regarding the Ventanas smelter, he stated that “it is the one that contributes 62% of the sulfur dioxide to the environment, 50% of the sulfur dioxide at a regional level, but it must also be said that today Chile does not have an environmental standard similar to the supported or proposed by the World Health Organization”.
“Today, without a doubt, it is essential to improve our environmental standards according to what the WHO proposes. For example, today we do not have an arsenic standard in Chile; the sulfur dioxide standard is completely lax”, added the regional authority.
Along these lines, he stated that “today, when I speak of a structural problem, I am referring to this problem. A problem that is related to the fact that today the environmental norm allows situations of this nature to be repeated also in Tocopilla, Mejillones, Huasco , Colonel and, particularly on this occasion, in what is happening in our region, in our territory”.
