The residents of Puerto Escondido, in the province of Mayabeque, Cuba, no longer know who to turn to or how else to report what they are experiencing. Constant gas leaks, deterioration of the vegetation due to hydrocarbon contamination and, finally, the installation of piles for a gas pipeline in the only baseball field in the town have exhausted the patience of the residents with the Energas company.
“Until a few years ago, one would say the name of this town and what came to mind were natural beauties, the sea and fun, but Cupet has taken part of that away from us,” laments Dayamí, who agrees to tell 14ymedio what is happening in his town, although with a name changed for fear of reprisals. “The stench of oil in the air is constant,” he adds.
In Puerto Escondido there is a plant managed by the Cuban-Canadian mixed company Energas SA, which is managed by the official companies Cupet and Unión Eléctrica together with the company Canadian Sherritt. It is a raw gas processing plant and a turbine, to which is added an electrical generator with a power of 20 megawatts. The energy stability of various hotel facilities in the area depends on the latter.
“This used to be a paradise but now even the grass is dying, the lemon trees are dying and the leaves of the trees are covered in spots and remain as if burned. If that happens to the plants, what will be happening to our lungs?” Complains Dayamí, 32, who has two small children, one of them asthmatic “who is constantly having crises because here you can no longer breathe clean air.”
Gas production from oil from the Energas plant is transferred through a pipeline between Puerto Escondido and the Boca de Jaruco plant, both of which supply manufactured gas to part of the city of Havana. At the beginning of this year, a pipeline break caused a leak and left part of the Cuban capital without service. For the residents of Puerto Escondido, that incident resembles their “daily bread,” the woman denounces.
“A part of the gas treated in the Boca de Jaruco and Puerto Escondido plants is sent to Havana to cook food for around 280,000 families. Likewise, the Energas plants produce other fundamental components for the national economy, such as LPG , naphtha and sulfur”, Edel Andrés Alfaro Pérez, economic manager of Energas, recently strutted.
But Dayamí does not see the operation of the plant with such optimistic eyes: “People feel this stench of gas everywhere when there is a leak, but we live surrounded by that smell. When we leave here and move to other municipalities we carry that plague above. When I visit my mother, who lives in La Lisa, I always have to take off all my clothes and shower when I get there because I smell burning oil.”
“As if that were not enough, what they have done in recent days is an unprecedented insult,” adds another resident of the municipality, who sent a complaint to the newsroom of 14ymedio. “They [Energas] They have taken the right that no one gave them to cross the only baseball field, where the adults and children of the town play”.
The outdoor space for practicing sports is “the only thing that exists in the town because they have never built anything in the last decades, they have not even paved the only dirt road that exists in Puerto Escondido.” “They have crossed the baseball field with cement piles supposedly for the construction of a pipeline elevated in the air,” he explains, and accompanies his testimony with images where the structures that rise from the ground and that will support the pipeline are seen. .
For this local resident, it is outrageous that no one consulted the neighbors about the new work. “No one spoke to anyone or took the realization of said pipeline to a vote. It is disrespectful,” he stresses. “They are practically the owners of everything and they do what they want without counting on anyone, without respect for anything or anyone. They took away our clean air and now they have also damaged the ball field.”
“They have to stop this work because in this batey there is nothing else for the children to have fun. We need them to be able to continue playing baseball,” claims the neighbor whose grandparents and parents were also born in Puerto Escondido. “Here there is no park or computer center or anything. Youth and adults enjoyed this ball field.”
It was recently announced that the Cuban Government, as part of the payment of a debt of 368 million dollars with the Canadian Sherritt approved a 20-year extension of the contract of the mixed company Energas, until March 2043, so that the extraction of gas in Puerto Escondido is far from being something momentary and the residents of the town see how the industrial works They continue to gain ground.
“Two weeks ago they began to extract earth and lay the foundations for these piles, part of the town has crossed us from one side to the other and also the ball field,” details the neighbor who wrote to this newspaper. “The pipe will remain in the open air, elevated on those columns. People are afraid of accidents, leaks, and they are also very upset, sad, and humiliated.”
“Here even the flamboyants are dying, because wisps of gas are constantly coming out of the plant,” explains the neighbor. “This was a very natural town, we had several popular campsites but most of them are already closed. Who is going to be interested now in coming to a town with the stench of oil and with a pipe running through it?” He questions.
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