Seafood in Ventanas, Chile, is turning up contaminated. In the 1980s, fishermen thrived, serving up urchins, clams and fish to rich tourists, but in 2000, the National Health Service shut down their operation because of heavy metal and fecal contamination. Though fishermen protested against companies polluting the waters, over time tourists left, restaurants closed, and fishermen had to find other jobs. That was just the beginning of their problems. In 2014, 38,700 liters of oil spilled into the sea. There were more oil spills in 2015 and 2016.
Those three environmental accidents came at the hands of the National Petroleum Company. There are efforts to clean up the area, though. Fishermen are now paid to shovel coal that washes up on the beach and have attempted to revive a management area where they cultivate abalone. But communities still won’t eat from the area some now call “Chilean Chernobyl.”
Read more: mongabay.com
0 Comments