The “Save the Forest Park Movement” reacted to the announcement made this Thursday by President Sebastián Piñera, who began the construction of Line 7 of the Santiago Metro, which will join the communes of Renca, Cerro Navia, Quinta Normal, Santiago, Providencia, Las Condes and Vitacura, and whose layout includes roads under the park.
“The opposition to the layout of Metro line 7 through the Parque Forestal has been supported across the board by all the neighborhood and citizen organizations that ensure the protection of heritage in general and that see the centenary trees of this emblematic park threatened, as well as by public entities, such as the Municipality of Santiago and the National Monuments Council in its relevant connotation of protecting the country’s heritage. This demonstrates the irrefutable legitimacy of the Movement and its cause,” they point out in a statement.
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“Organized citizens, together with the support of the Municipality of Santiago and the National Monuments Council, have been calling on the Metro company for years to review the project’s layout and look for alternatives that do not involve going under the Forest Park and putting Such a valuable legacy for the city of Santiago is at risk. All observations, challenges and resources have been made and exhausted in each of the available administrative and judicial procedures established, in order to reverse this political decision to persist and finally proceed to intervene in the Forest Park, without considering alternatives to the proposed layout, including all the observations presented to the SEIA in its different instances that were never accepted Metro is untrue, in this process there has been no citizen participation but only ‘informative’ spaces and processes called ‘ of participation’ to present observations that are not considered”, they add.
In this line, they emphasize that the Metro, “the Environmental institution and the Courts are aligned before a political decision turning their backs on the citizens and public entities that object to the route.”
“It is unusual and paradoxical that, a few days after the end of the government of the President of Sebastián Piñera, the Committee of his Ministers, tries to make the political decision to definitively approve the RCA, announcing it in advance in the press and, in the face of full citizen opposition, attempting against all sense of ethics and good practices that a government should have before the end of its mandate”, they summon.
“Therefore, as a last resort, we appeal to the consideration of the new authorities to re-evaluate this political decision, contrary to the protection of the Environment, heritage and quality public spaces, in light of the new policies that They demand the consideration of new global criteria in the way of building cities, which advocate an immediate reaction to Climate Change, such as the protection of its parks and its heritage and take into account the arguments and foundations that citizens have presented to carry out carried out this legitimate social defense that rejects the layout of Metro line 7 through the Forest Park, which, if approved, would lead to its destruction”, they close.
