Claudia Albino, a washerwoman who earns about US$3 a day and lives in a one-room hovel with her family in this bleak town high in the Andes, might seem at first to have nothing to do with Ira Rennert, the reclusive New York billionaire who built one of the largest homes in the US, an Italianate mansion sprawling over more than 6,000m² in the Hamptons.
But Rennert’s privately held industrial empire includes the smelter with a towering smokestack that overlooks Albino’s home, so the health and economic fate of her and thousands of others here rest on the corporate maneuvers he is carrying out.
La Oroya has been called one of the world’s 10 most polluted places by the Blacksmith Institute, a nonprofit group that studies toxic sites. But for several months, the Peruvian smelting company in Rennert’s empire has claimed that low metals prices prevented it from completing a timely cleanup to lower the emissions that have given this town such an ignoble distinction.
The tensions here over the lead emissions and the smelter’s financial meltdown is precisely the kind of dire mix of foreign investment and environmental contamination feared by indigenous groups elsewhere in Peru, particularly in the country’s Amazon basin, where protests over similar issues left dozens dead this month.
Citing financial difficulties, the Peruvian operators of the smelter, who have already idled most of its operations, have threatened to shut down entirely for several months, putting in danger 3,000 jobs at the plant and thousands more who rely on it like Albino, who washes clothes for the wives of smelter workers.
Last week, some workers and residents protested against the possible closing, halting traffic and commerce along the highway that descends from La Oroya to the capital, Lima. Then on Tuesday, the government signaled that it might be open to extending the October deadline for the cleanup. Officials involved in talks on Wednesday said that one possible solution to the impasse would involve giving workers some control of the plant.
“This man Rennert, I’ve heard of him on television, of his great wealth and the homes he has around the world,” said Albino. “As for me, I cannot afford to test the lead levels in my daughters’ blood any longer,” she said, attributing the stunted growth of her youngest daughter, 7, to the smelter’s emissions.
Residents of La Oroya, with a population of 35,000, talk about the lead in their blood like people elsewhere discuss the weather. Ninety-seven percent of children under the age of 6 had lead levels that would be considered toxic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US, according to a 2005 study by scientists from Saint Louis University. But while some here seethe against Rennert and the company, Doe Run Peru, others defend them for providing work, making for a sharply divided town.
“We are thankful to Doe Run,” said Elizabeth Canales, 40, a seamstress and a member of a company-supported group that teaches hygiene to poor families here. “It truly saddens me because I don’t know if this is happening because there’s a misunderstanding.”
In a town where billboards with utopian images of happy families promote the company’s deeds, some publicly praise Doe Run Peru while requesting, amid fear of retribution, anonymity to vent their anger at the company. “This town is owned by one company, and we vassals cannot be seen as disloyal to our owners,” said one longtime worker.
RSS