the state company Codelcothe world’s largest copper producer, announced this Friday the closure of a smelter located in the “Chilean Chernobyl“, a contaminated zone in the central coast of the country.
Due to the majority vote of its board of directors, the company decided to close the Ventanas smelter, in the industrial zone of Quintero and Puchuncaví, about 140 km west of Santiago.
The decision comes after a new episode of air pollution on June 9 that affected 115 people, most of them schoolchildren, and forced the closure of schools, as has been repeated for decades due to the pollution of the place.
“The complex socio-environmental situation of the industrial pole of Puchuncaví-Quintero was exposed in recent weeks after different episodes of poisoning,” Codelco said in a statement.
