New Charges of Fraud on Waterway Project's EIS
10/22/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Araguaia-Tocantins Hidrovia waterway project: New charges of
fraud on the Environmental Impact Statement
Source: Instituto Socioambiental
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 22, 1999
A biologist has accused companies responsible for the project of
doctoring his study on the hidrovia's impacts on fish. Biologist
Afonso Pereira Fialho, of the Biology Department of the Catholic
University of GoiŸnia, has affirmed that the findings by a group of
specialists on the project's impacts on fish were modified. "We see
that they changed the content and sense of the study, leaving out as
much as 50% of the original text", he said.
In their study, biologists Afonso Fialho and Francisco Leonardo
Tejerina Garro concluded that the impacts of the hidrovia on fish
would be intense. These consequences would be felt among populations
living in the project's area of influence, particularly those who
traditionally nourish themselvs with fish from the region.
To minimize these findings, besides editing out undesired sections of
the study, the "editors" of the Enviromental Impact Report cut out
those chapters detailing environmental impacts and the possible
mitigatory measurers proposed for these impacts. They frequentlyl
substituted the word "actions" for "impacts", semantically modifying
the rerport.
The latest denuncation reveals the strategy of the project's
proponents to make it feasible by omitting information. In August,
four anthropologists reponsible for studiesr on the hidrovia's
impacts on the way of life of indigenrous societies in the region
said that the hidrovia authority, Ahitar, had mutilated their text.
The Federal Attorney's office in Mato Grosso, responding to a
complaint by the Socioambiental Institute and the Xavante indigenous
communities of Pimentel Barbosa and Areoes, asked the Federal Police
to open an inquiry to investigate charges of fraud on the EIA. (ISA/
DF, 21/10/99)