El Mercurio Valparaíso || Warning of the effects of a mole in the Maipo River Wetland Nature Sanctuary

The Cosmos Foundation sent a letter to the project’s Advisory Board, requesting clarification.

The Cosmos Foundation, the entity responsible for managing the Maipo River Wetland Nature Sanctuary, expressed its concern about the construction of the Outer Port and, in particular, about what will be the breakwater for the port megaproject.

In a letter, the director of the entity, Diego Urrejola, asked the project’s Advisory Council to understand the technical and economic reasons that led the San Antonio Port Authority (EPSA) to design a breakwater in the Maipo River estuary, “just meters from an ecosystem of hemispheric importance (for which it has been declared a Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve and Nature Sanctuary), in addition to reporting on the location alternatives they evaluated for the project.”

Along these lines, the letter emphasizes that “the consensus of technical experts and conservation managers is that the project’s main impact on the ecosystem will be due to the breakwater, an infrastructure whose location the project owner has not publicly justified, despite repeated requests for information since 2015.”

They also reject any opportunity for fast-track approval “without proper studies and mitigations of the environmental impact of a project with deficiencies from the outset.”