Please pass along where ever you can.. From Pedestrain site posted today.
6-23-2006
when the last tree is cut and when the last glacier
(water shed) is destroyed we will have to drink gold
or sulphuric acid......
In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile
runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers.
Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be
fought for it.
Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no
unemployment, and they provide the second largest
source of income for the area.
Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of
gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it
would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers -
something never conceived of in the history of the
world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a
whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the
mine's rubbish tip.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is
called Barrick Gold.
The operation is planned by a multi-national company,
one of whose members is George Bush Senior.
The Chilean Government has approved the project to
start this year,
2006.
The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the
farmers have got a temporary stay of execution.
If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just
destroy the source of especially pure water, but they
will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will
never again be fit for human or animal consumption
because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in
the extraction process.
Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the
multinational company and not one will be left with
the people whose land it is. They will only be left
with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.
The farmers have been fighting a long time for their
land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a
ban from the Ministry of the Interior.
Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project
is to get help from international justice.
The world must know what is happening in Chile.
We ask you to circulate this message amongst your
friends in the following way.
Please copy this text, paste it into a new email
adding your signature and send it to everyone in your
address book. Please, will the 100th person to receive
and sign the petition, send it to
noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the Chilean
Government.
No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean
Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.
We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the
Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3
glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix
Valley and El Transito, the quality of the
agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the
quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the
whole population of the region.
