Rainforest Action Network

Help Stop Cargill Soy Mega-Port in Paraguay Before It's Too Late!

RAN supporters already sent more than 18,000 letters to Paraguayan officials. But despite those letters and 600,000 signatures gathered by a coalition of concerned citizens in Asuncion, Paraguay Cargill's proposal to build a soy mega-port on the Paraguay River was passed in the final days of 2007.

The port will burn 230,000 cubic meters of wood annually. It will also put toxic chemicals like Round-Up herbicide dangerously close to people and municipal water. It will be located just one third of a mile from the water intake of the public utility company that provides drinking water to more than a million people in the capital, Asuncion, and surrounding areas. The water contamination will likely lead to higher rates of cancer, leukemia, and respiratory illness.

The only way to stop the port now is by appealing directly to Cargill.

Send a letter to Cargill CEO Gregory Page today and tell him not to build this deadly port!

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I'm very concerned about your companies' plans to build the "Oil-Extraction Industrial Plant and Bulk Commodities Terminal of Port Zeballos, Inc.", also known as Puerto Union, in Asuncion Paraguay despite public concern that the port will contaminate the drinking water supply for the entire city and its surrounding communities; expand soy production on the lands of campesinos, Indigenous people and Paraguay's remaining forests; and increase the use of toxic agro-chemicals on soy plantations.

I am concerned that aerial spraying and use of agro-chemicals is taking place near schools and communities resulting in serious public health problems and environmental contamination.

Before you proceed with construction of the soy mega-port, I ask that you consider the following:

One of the basic recommendations given by the World Health Organization in order to insure the right to drinking water is to protect the sources from possible pollutants, avoiding the use of complicated and unsafe technologies to insure decontamination. With the industrial facility and the port projected to be built 1/3 of a mile upstream from the drinking water intakes, the threat of a sanitary emergency is increased exponentially. Additionally, the accumulation of silt and sediment caused by the soy port will increase the levels of contamination over time.

Local communities will also face air, noise, and vibration contamination. Air contamination is a serious concern, as there will be an increase of contamination directly from the port, and a an increase of trucks transporting soy. This will also cause road congestion near the port and surrounding community.

Agrochemicals are also a serious concern. The entire population, not only in the surrounding community, but also along the truck routes, will be exposed to either acute or chronic intoxication. Several known cases in Argentina demonstrate the unhealthy and even lethal direct and indirect influence of a dry bulk port on the population. We hope that these ill-fated experiences will not be repeated in Paraguay.

Indirect impacts from this facility are also of grave concern. As mentioned above, this port will give a strong boost to the expansion of the agroindustrial frontier, that for years has been devastating forests, land and waters in the territory, and decimating peasant and Indigenous communities in the country. Recent history demonstrates that frenzied adoption of such models of development have only generated more poverty, more exclusion, more inequality and more emigration.

For the aforementioned reasons, I demand that:

1. The construction of the port and the industrial plant is immediately stopped, and an environmental monitoring is conducted in the area to assess in detail the impacts generated by the ports already operating.

2. The Municipal Ordinance 15/02 is observed, that stipulates that the construction and the activity of polluting activities should not be permitted due to the housing and high landscaping and environmental value characteristics of the area.

3. To work with legal instruments for the territorial arrangement of the country that regulates the sitting of new ports and industrial plants in accordance to production planning.

4. A productive diversification is promoted addressing internal needs of food, controlling the expansion of the agro-export frontier and, following the UN guidance, an urgent moratorium is declared in regard to the production of agro-fuels.

I look forward to your detailed response as to how your company will address this serious issue.

Thank you,

Campaign Launched:
March 05, 2008