[Marxism] Capitalist pig of the month

[Colin Brace]

Louis, I heartily endorse your nomination. Rennert is a world-class
bastard. Here is what I wrote several years ago on my short-lived blog
about the activities of his company Doe Run in Peru. Links follow.

Poisonous privatizations
April 1st, 2005

As anyone who has taken a bus from Lima to Huancayo in the central
Andean highlands knows, the valley in which the town of La Oroya is
situated is a veritable moonscape; there is not a single leaf of grass
to be seen, just barren slopes. No, it is not the result of some
geological anamoly, it is because the biggest integrated lead, copper
and zinc smelter in Peru is located there, owned by Doe Run of St.
Louis, Missouri. Thanks to the smelter, the town is the midst of a
public health crisis of tragic proportions:

    Almost all young children in Peru's La Oroya mining town have
harmful levels of lead in their blood and many are suffering from
bronchitis and stunted growth because of toxic gases pumped out by the
U.S.-owned metals smelter there. Emissions from Peru's top smelter in
the central Andes are also causing acid rain, polluting rivers with
zinc and arsenic and creating "generations of sick people,"
non-governmental organizations and La Oroya community groups told a
mining conference in Lima. "In the latest study by Doe Run and the
health ministry, 99.9 percent of children under six have lead blood
levels above what the World Health Organization calls normal," said
Hugo Villa, a doctor who heads the La Oroya Health Movement NGO. "Our
children are being poisoned by this smelter. It is creating
generations of sick people."

Under Peru's environmental laws, Doe Run is required to build a US$100
million sulfuric acid plant to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 2007.
But Doe Run said it needed until 2011 or it would be in default on
bank loans and be forced to pull out of Peru. The government's
decision to grant more time to Doe Run to clean up its toxic emissions
will subject children to more pollution and increase the incidence of
lung, liver and kidney disease in La Oroya.

According to Friends of the Earth, Doe Run is the world's second
largest lead mining and smelting company. The company is one of
several heavily polluting companies owned by reclusive Long Island
billionaire Ira Rennert, who has been called "the biggest private
polluter in America." FOE cites the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory
which identifies Doe Run as "the biggest polluter in the state of
Missouri, due in large part to toxic emissions from its 110-year old
lead smelter in the town of Herculaneum" (near St. Louis). According
to FOE, pollution at La Oroya is so intense it has precipitated an
emergency situation:

    According to Peruvian government figures, 90% of children in the
city have blood-lead levels above acceptable international standards;
nearly 20% have lead levels that should require hospitalization.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide, cadmium, arsenic and lead all greatly
exceed World Health Organization standards — according to the
company's own data. Long term exposure to these substances can have
potentially fatal impacts on human health. Contamination levels at La
Oroya have increased dramatically since Doe Run bought the Doe Run
operation from the Peruvian government in 1997. When Doe Run purchased
the complex, it agreed to undertake an investment program to modernize
the plant and equipment and to meet the requirements of the
Environmental Management and Remediation Plan (PAMA in Spanish, a
legal requirement in Peru). However, because of the decline in the
prices of most metals since 1997 and the company's desire to pay for
its investment program from income generated by the refinery itself,
it has decided to delay [until 2011] the largest single investment:
scrubbers to reduce SO2 emissions from the smoke stack.

The company's own website indicates that Doe Run Peru had sales of
nearly US$424 million in 2003 (PDF)

Aside from the theoretical issue of whether governments or not should
be in the business of running such enterprises, the problems in La
Oroya highlight the dark side of many real-world privatizations, and
not only in the South, namely the lack of subsequent control and
accountability. On Alberto Fujimori's watch, hundreds of state-owned
enterprises like the La Oroya smelter were sold off, but effective
mechanisms to ensure that the investments promised by the new (often
foreign) owners were not in place. Given that nearly all the money
raised in Fujimori's privatization binge was squandered, Peruvians are
now paying twice.


http://www.foe.org/WSSD/doerun.html
http://www.doerun.com/uploadfile/2003-Peru-fact-sheet.pdf

(temp url: <http://lim.nl/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/peru>)

-- 
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam
  http://lim.nl