Ecuador and Peru strengthen the frontier relation with a mining regeneration

The Government of Ecuador impels a project of mining regeneration on the border with Peru to strengthen a Binational Plan of Development, announced the undersecretary of Environmental Protection of the Department of Mines and Oil, Lucía Ruiz.

The plan, to develop in the basin of the rivers Puyango (Ecuador) and Fall down (Peru), it relies on with a budget for 3 million dollars invested in the last 18 months, pointed out Ruiz during the opening of I Binational Forum Ecuador - Peru dedicated to the “sustentable Development and mining, in the basin Puyango-Tumbes”.

This meeting, at which authorities of both countries are present, takes place in the Ecuadoran city of Pineapples, in the coastal province of The Gold, frontier with Peru and next to the place of the project.

The target of the program is “to realize an effective control of the mining activity” “to recover environmental debits in the banks of the rivers” of the area, contaminated by the metal extraction, Ruiz declared.

The undersecretary of Environmental Protection announced that the plan foresees “to modernize the mining, to manage a suitable handling of the water” and of the chemical substances that are used in the activity, as well as “to realize a zoning and rehabilitation of the soil”, to improve the living conditions of the populations of the region.

This project between Ecuador and Peru was born in 1971 with the target to share the use of the water resource, but the neighboring conflict that came untied between January and February, 1995 interrupted the cooperation.

Ruiz told that in 1998, when both countries signed the peace agreement that finished his frontier disagreements, the joint works were recaptured concerning the water resource and the mining.

The Government of Ecuador has promised to eliminate the contamination that produces the informal mining in some rivers of the south of the country and that affects also to the north area of Peru.

Also, both countries are pawned in promoting the development sustentable in the dividing area, remembered Ruiz, and added that the current Government impels “plans and specific actions that confirm the will of integration of the Ecuadoran State with the nearby countries”.

07-10-2008 EFE