Nine kilometers from San Ramón, on Route 12, in Canelones, a wooden gate with stone walls leads to a lonely dirt road in the direction of the Santa Lucia River. It is possible to reach the sand pit that works on that property with precise indications, because there is no sign that identifies it like others that work in the same area.
the company was denounced by the mayor Yamandú Orsi before the Ministry of Environment for having changing the course of the river in some points and having built passages for artificial trucks.
Orsi delivered this Wednesday the complaint in front of the press, in the Executive Tower, to the Undersecretary of the Environment, Gerardo Amarilla. The next day the authorities deployed. Between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., the sandpit received a team from the Ministry of the Environment who arrived together with technicians from the Canelones Municipality, according to what the owner of the sandbox explained to The Observer.
Later, another team from the mayor’s office, which included the presence of a lawyer, went to the place to notify him that the environmental impact that had been recorded on his property is subject to a penalty of 2 thousand UR, that is, about 3 million pesosbut, the instance of the defenses of the person in charge of the sandbox is still missing.
Around 2:30 p.m., when The Observer I was in the place two inspectors from the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM) arrived looking for the owner of the establishment. The visit of that ministry arose almost by chance. When Orsi arrived at the Executive Tower to deliver the complaint to the Ministry of the Environment, the MIEM undersecretary, Walter VerriHe came to the building.
The mayor and Verri spoke briefly about the complaint about which the MIEM later requested more information and ended up closing the establishment for finding illegal mining.
The MIEM technicians got out of the official truck and a few meters away a backhoe went out. An employee of the company told The Observer who was working on the embankments and asked the journalists to leave the property.
Technicians removed a drone and other equipment from the vehicle. Meanwhile, the employee called the owner of the establishment to explain that the press and the inspection of the ministry were there.
The official car continued on towards the river. The objective was to check if, beyond the change in the riverbed, mining had been carried out in the surroundings. Verri explained to The Observer that the extraction of sand from navigable water courses is the responsibility of hydrography (Ministry of Transport) and not of its portfolio, however, this sand extracted the material from a Pilatos stream, which is a tributary of the Santa Lucía River which is not navigable.
“He had already been fined for acting clandestinely. Now it was detected that continued to operate in clandestine conditions and without sand extraction permits, said Verri. The company must also pay a fine imposed by the MIEM, which can range from 10,000 to 100,000 Indexed Units, that is, from 55,000 to almost $600. thousand However, the cost is still under evaluation by the technicians.
The environment and the sandpits
He The Santa Lucía River is the country’s main source of drinking water, supplying a total of 60%. But, in addition, it is also a source of exploitation for sand pits that work along its channel. And to do so they need ratings that have environmental limitations.
In the neighboring sand pit assured that they have the corresponding permits. But, still, the images impact. At some points the river is about three or four meters wide and the remaining 300 meters are mountains of sand, despite the fact that the map indicates that there should be water there.
Silvana Fernandez
Part of the Santa Lucía river that is exploited by sandboxes
In others, It is possible to cross the river on foot without getting your feet wet, although you can walk on sand and dry land product of exploitation and lack of rain. In the owner of the second sandbox, which is not included in the complaints as verified The Observer, explained that the sand it is taken from the “natural” banks that form against the river with the rising waterbut that some sandboxes make paths to “enter and get in”, something that is prohibited “and more so in this dry season,” criticized the sandbox.
Asked about the impact of the sandboxes on the Santa Lucía river, the General Director of Environmental Management of the Municipality of Canelones, Leonardo Heroupointed out: “There are sandpits that have permits, but obviously not in any way. This property made a stopper in the river, destroyed the vegetation, made a mess. There are sandboxes with permission. Are sandboxes an issue? Are. But you can’t prohibit everything either, you have to regulate and control them, which we do.”
He National Director of Mining and Geology, Marcelo PugliesiHe considered, however, that “it is debatable” that the sandboxes harm the environment because “sometimes it is necessary to dredge so that the watercourse does not clog and run away”.
The Ministry of Environment was aware of the situation since October last yeargiven that the director of Environmental Management of the Municipality of Canelones, Leonardo Herou, had sent a letter to the national director of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Dinabice), Gerardo Eviain which he informed him of what they had detected.
Pugliesi replied that he does not know why it took “so long” to take the measure of notifying the situation to MIEM, part of the Canelones Municipality because in the mining code the prohibition of extracting sand from non-navigable watercourses is foreseenas happened in this case. “It could have been done earlier,” concluded Pugliesi.
