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ARGENTINA: View from the Beach: Sunrise – and Smokestack

Marcela Valente

GUALEGUAYCHÚ, Argentina, Dec 19 2006 (IPS) - Ñandubaysal, the prettiest riverside resort near the Argentine town of Gualeguaychú, is on the Uruguay River, which forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay. On their way to the enormous Río de la Plata estuary, the river’s clear waters flow past the resort’s sandy beaches – as well as the smokestack of a paper pulp mill on the opposite shore.

“We have the best sunrises in the world,” boasted the manager of one of the restaurants at the beach resort, which is visited by about 300,000 holidaymakers every summer.

The 120-metre tall stack is, so far, just a sore thumb sticking out on the Uruguayan side of the river. But if the pulp mill under construction by the Finnish firm Botnia starts operating next year as planned, it may be the beginning of the end, claims Agustín, the restaurant manager.

“Most of the time the wind comes from that direction, and it will bring a smell of rotten eggs from the chimney,” he said, referring to the emissions of sulphur compounds that Botnia admits will be released several times a year. The odour will be perceptible up to 50 kilometres away, depending on the winds. The Argentine beach is 17 kilometres away.

Agustín is also pessimistic about the river. The pulp mill will use at least 80 million litres of water a day, which it will take from the Uruguay River. On the Argentine shore, bathers can already wade in for 200 metres without the water reaching more than waist-high. And people are alarmed about the liquid residues that the plant will dump back into the river.

“This river is slow-flowing. The current does not flow strongly towards the Río de la Plata (River Plate), but comes and goes. That’s why we’re very afraid of pollution,” Agustín said.

“People of my age – I’m 64 – have seen it happen in other rivers, where decades ago one could swim and bathe in them, and now they are nothing but filthy sewers,” he explained. One example of this is the Riachuelo, which flows through the city of Buenos Aires.

Ñandubaysal (which means a grove of ñandubay trees, a native local species) is a private resort 15 kilometres from the northeastern Argentine town of Gualeguaychú. It is the town’s only beach resort on the Uruguay River, and is the favourite among tourists and the 90,000 residents of Gualeguaychú, which is on the easternmost edge of Entre Ríos province and 270 kilometres north of Buenos Aires.

There are also beaches along the Gualeguaychú River, the tributary on which the town is located. Although the factory emissions may sometimes reach the town, 25 km away, its smokestack cannot be seen from here. But the beaches are small and the narrow river is very deep. Local residents say the Uruguay River is wider and much more beautiful. Peaceful Gualeguaychú has attained international notoriety for its active resistance to plans to build two pulp mills on the Uruguayan bank of the Uruguay River. (The Spanish company ENCE recently decided to build its own mill elsewhere in Uruguay).

In 2003, residents began to hold demonstrations and protest marches, which gradually grew more and more radical. A near permanent roadblock, halting traffic on the highway leading to one of the three international bridges linking Argentina and Uruguay, was mounted in the southern hemisphere summer of 2005-2006 and reinstated this month, at the start of the 2006-2007 summer.

“The Gualeguaychú Frigorífico (meat packing plant), which one-third of our population depended on for a living, closed down 25 years ago, and since then we have concentrated on tourism,” Marta Gorrosterrazú, secretary of the Citizen Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychú (ACAG) which is opposed to the arrival of large-scale pulp factories, told IPS. “This will change our way of life,” she argued.

Martín Alazard is a doctor, and an active member of the Assembly. “It’s true that you can’t see the factory from here,” he told IPS in the office that the municipal Secretariat of Culture lets ACAG use. “But this town lives off the tourists who come for our carnival and our beaches.”

Along Gualeguaychú’s long main commercial street, there is hardly a shop window without a sign declaring opposition to the pulp mill. Some shop fronts are so pasted over with posters and photographs of the demonstrations that it is hard to tell whether they are shops or ACAG offices.

Carnival is the main tourist attraction during the summer months (December to March). “On any given day during carnival season, 30,000 people come to the parade stadium (corsódromo), and of all these people moving about the city, some 10,000 go to Ñandubaysal, where the smokestack can be seen,” Alazard said.

The doctor is also concerned about the emissions that may reach the city, which is 25 km from the plant, and about river pollution. “If we let them put up a factory there, other companies will come afterwards wanting to instal their plants in our riverside cities, upstream and downstream,” he predicted. According to the Gualeguaychú Secretariat of Tourism, which supports the residents’ protests, the town received 470,000 visitors in 2005. Last year, for the first time, tourists also came in winter, after a thermal spa complex opened.

“We have the carnival, beaches, thermal springs, water sports, the casino and, of course, our natural surroundings,” the coordinator of the Gualeguaychú Secretariat of Tourism, Fabián Godoy, told IPS. “The tourism sector employs 4,500 people year-round, and double that number in the summer months.”

Attendance at the municipal soup kitchens for the poor and unemployed falls from 6,000 in winter to 4,500 in summer, when more temporary work is available.

That is why, the Assembly members explained, they put up roadblocks as a protest measure against Uruguay. But the Uruguayan government supports the construction of Botnia’s pulp factory for exactly the same reason: to create jobs.

“Tourism is where it hits them the hardest,” said Agustín, talking about how the roadblocks halt Argentine tourists on their way to Uruguayan beaches on the Atlantic coast. “They say the roadblocks hurt the influx of tourists, but I’ve got three Uruguayan women working for me, and my business also supports my children and grandchildren,” he said.

The administration of Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez estimates that the roadblocks cost the country 400 million dollars in lost tourism income last summer. On the Argentine side, people point to estimates of the economic damages that would have been done had the two factories started operating. ENCE decided this year to withdraw from its original location, and this month announced that it would rebuild, probably near the city of Colonia on the Río de la Plata.

The Argentine delegation to the bilateral high-level working group that was set up in 2005 to find a solution to the conflict – which it failed to do – estimated the socioeconomic impact of the two factories at 813 million dollars.

That figure included the projected depreciation of rural and urban real estate and losses from the potential decline in tourism and agricultural and livestock production.

Gualeguaychú residents who man the roadblocks say that tourism is their most important asset. Tourist information offices display posters and stock leaflets about the pulp mills, which are handed out to every visitor.

At the entrance to Gualeguaychú, newcomers are welcomed with a huge sign condemning the pulp factories.

“When a tourist arrives here, it never rains,” the taxi driver said a few moments after I arrived in a veritable downpour. And in fact, a few hours later there was a clear blue sky and the temperature was nearly 30 degrees Celsius.