In the shadow of a huge smelter on the banks of a lifeless, Andean river sits La Oroya, often described as one of the most polluted cities in Latin America. Eight decades of refining lead, copper, zinc, silver and other minerals, for the most part without environmental controls, have blighted the hillsides and caused high blood-lead levels in local children.

Peru has made environmental headway in recent years as a result of green legislation enacted in the 1990s. But La Oroya, a city of 50,000 about 100 miles east of Lima, underscores how in no small number of places, progress is slow-in-coming—thanks to a legacy of unbridled contamination and lax urban planning.

Doe Run Peru, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Doe Run Resources Corp., purchased the La Oroya smelting operation in 1997 from Centromin, a state-owned mining company now being privatized. It says it is carrying out a government-mandated cleanup plan that Centromin drafted in 1996. The blueprint, known as an Environmental Adjustment and Management Plan (Pama), spells out a 10-year program of plant improvements and emissions reductions.

Doe Run asserts its own research into lead contamination in residents—a major concern in the area—does not give cause for alarm. But two studies carried out in 1999, one by Unes, a consortium of non-governmental organizations, and the other by the Peruvian Health Ministry’s environmental-health office, suggest otherwise; each found excessive blood-lead levels in 90% of the children tested.

Residents have not been quick to accept Doe Run’s assurances—a fact few observers find surprising, given the history of contamination in La Oroya. Indeed, La Oroya is a case study in the uneasy coexistence of communities and mining in Peru.

“The lack of trust comes from years of poor environmental management and the fact that there has been no sustained improvement at the local level,” says Carlos Chirinos, director of the citizen-defense area of the Peruvian Environmental Law Society, a nonprofit group based in Lima. “People don’t see how they have benefited.”

Built in the 1920s, the smelting complex operated for decades with virtually no environmental safeguards. During the Centromin years, waste was dumped into rivers and streams, releasing contaminants including cadmium, arsenic and lead.

“Centromin ended in chaos and disaster,” says Luís Castillo, secretary general of the Doe Run Employees Union. “They did nothing to improve the facilities.”

Doe Run officials say they are moving as fast as they can to reduce emissions. But local non-governmental organizations and national environmental groups say the operations constitute a serious health hazard, and farmers in nearby communities claim pollutants wafting from La Oroya are poisoning their fields.

Although a multi-stakeholder group formed in February 2000 has brought representatives of the company, local governments and non-governmental organizations to the negotiating table, distrust remains endemic in La Oroya, as it does in many mining communities here.

Mining now represents nearly half of Peru’s export revenue and 4.7% of its gross domestic product, spurred by privatization and foreign investment in the 1990s. Government officials have taken to calling the mining sector the country’s economic engine.

Yet the remote Andean regions where most mining is done are among the most impoverished areas of the country, which has seen poverty rates inch upward in recent years. About 54% of Peruvians—more than 12.5 million people—now live on less than $2 a day.

Mining regions also pay an environmental price, the public-health effects of which have generated debate in La Oroya.

Of 30 children under age three who were covered in the study by the Unes consortium and the National University of San Marcos in Lima, 7% had blood-lead levels ranging from 15 to 19 micrograms per deciliter, 47% registered between 20 and 44 micrograms, and 43% showed blood-lead levels from 45 to 69 micrograms. Peruvian norms follow the World Health Organization maximum allowable lead limit of 10 micrograms per deciliter. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, levels above 20 micrograms are dangerously high for children, and recent studies have indicated that developmental damage could occur even at levels below 10 micrograms.

In the 1999 Environmental Health Office study of 346 children aged two to 10, 13.3% of the children had lead levels ranging from 10 to 20 micrograms per deciliter, 67% had levels from 20 to 44 micrograms, and 19% had levels above 44 micrograms, including two whose levels exceeded 70 micrograms.

The report on Doe Run’s larger study, carried out in 2000, lists average blood-lead levels rather than ranges, making it impossible to tell what the highest levels were. Even so, the average in the area closest to the smelting plant was 25.7 micrograms per deciliter, 2.5 times the World Health Organization limit, while levels ranging from 11 to 15 micrograms were registered in other areas.

Company officials downplay the results, saying the children it has tested in the area show no symptoms of lead poisoning and perform normally in school.

“There haven’t been symptoms; there is nothing to indicate that there has been damage so far,” says José Mogrovejo, Doe Run’s corporate director of environmental affairs. He adds that the company is concerned and continues its monitoring.

Some parents, however, say their children have memory problems and other difficulties that could be related to lead poisoning. The situation is complicated by high levels of child malnutrition, which make it difficult to determine the source of motor- and cognitive-development problems.

Follow-up of the lead studies has been impossible—even in the case of the children with the highest blood-lead levels—because the government-run health center in La Oroya lacks the necessary funds and equipment. Norma Córdoba, a nurse at the health center, says parents of children involved in the Health Ministry study nevertheless have received counseling in nutrition and lead-poisoning prevention.

Chirinos says the government should declare a health emergency in La Oroya and order relocation of the highest-risk residents, a thorough cleanup and preventive measures. Such an action would resemble recent decisions by U.S. and state officials in
Missouri to require cleanup at the Doe Run Resources lead smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri.

Missouri health authorities declared the smelter an “urgent public health hazard” after finding high lead levels in the blood of children living near the facility. In March, the company agreed to relocate about 160 families. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, has given the company until July to meet federal emissions standards.

La Oroya’s problems have been exacerbated by a lack of urban planning. After the smelter was built, workers’ settlements sprang up nearby, and the city grew along the highway and railroad. While efforts have been made over the years to move workers to new housing a safer distance away, thousands of people still live in Old La Oroya, the neighborhood closest to the plant, and several schools are directly across the river from the smelter.

Residents complain of eye, throat and skin irritation. Mogrovejo says new filters have reduced emissions from the smelter’s main stack by 40% since Doe Run took over, although he acknowledges it is possible so-called fugitive gas still escapes from other parts of the plant.

A study last September by the Unes consortium found that particulates, sulfur dioxide and lead levels in La Oroya exceeded Peruvian air-quality standards. High acidity and heavy metals also were found in rural communities outside La Oroya. Farmers complain their animals are becoming ill from contaminated pastureland, but there have been no scientific studies of plants or acid rain in the area. “We have gases circulating in our processes in conditions that do not allow for them to be treated effectively,” Mogrovejo says, adding that the second and third phases of the company’s Pama will address the problem.

Doe Run says first phase complete

The first phase, which focused on the handling and treatment of solid and liquid waste, is largely complete, he says. It included containment measures at the main slag deposit, which is about a mile and a half from the city, and the construction about five miles away of a storage facility for waste containing arsenic.

The second phase of the Pama involves the capture and compression of gases for easier handling and treatment. In the final phase, a plant will be built to convert sulfur dioxide into sulfuric acid for treatment or reuse.

Environmentalists say hazardous emissions could have been reduced far more quickly if the company had undertaken some of the steps it is leaving until the end. “For commercial reasons, Doe Run left the treatment of gas emissions until the eighth year,” Chirinos says. “If priorities had been based on health and environmental criteria, that would have been done within the first two years.”

But Mogrovejo asserts the acid treatment plant would not have been economically feasible until the other systems were in place.

The Unes consortium has proposed that Doe Run warn residents of peak emission times, so that people at risk of respiratory problems can stay indoors and schools can avoid scheduling physical education classes at those times. Mogrovejo says the company is trying to determine how to predict peaks based on the production cycle and climate conditions. Located in a river valley, La Oroya is affected by temperature inversions during the winter.

Meanwhile, Mogrovejo points to other steps the company has taken to reduce the chances of exposure to heavy metals. Plant employees shower before leaving work, no longer wear their work clothes home and do not eat or smoke in the facility, which employs 3,500. The company has removed contaminated dirt from public areas and sponsored campaigns to teach good hygiene.

Doe Run Peru also contributes to development projects in local communities, providing small-business training, remodeling schools and community centers, and offering agricultural aid. While such practices are a common element of the “good neighbor” policies of large mining companies, especially transnationals, some observers worry that private enterprise is becoming a substitute for the national government in remote parts of Peru.

Ruperto Cáceda, secretary of local development for the National Coordinating Group of Communities Affected by Mining (Conacami), says the government should tighten its generous tax policies for the mining sector. Then, he says, it should invest the revenues in communities rather than encourage private businesses to involve themselves in local development.

Mogrovejo, who headed the environmental-affairs area of the Energy and Mines Ministry in the mid-1990s, agrees that the roles of government and private enterprise should not become blurred. But he says Doe Run considers itself “just another neighbor here.”

Underlying the entire debate, Chirinos says, are issues of sustainable development in rural Peru, equality and transparency in negotiations, access to information and monitoring of mining’s environmental and social impacts.

Need for uniform standards

There is also a need to unify environmental standards. By law, each ministry—energy and mines, transportation, fisheries—sets standards for its own sector. That system, Chirinos says, makes it impossible to protect public health against the cumulative effects of emissions coming from different industries located in the same area.

The National Environmental Council, which reports to the prime minister, is drafting national environmental air-, water- and soil-quality standards.

Meanwhile, a grassroots environmental movement has taken hold in La Oroya and surrounding villages. In late 1998, the Unes consortium organized residents from various communities and trained them in environmental issues and monitoring. The group eventually formed a regional coordinating committee that spread to other parts of the country, finally organizing as Conacami in 1999.

Through awareness-raising activities in their communities and participation in the multi-stakeholder task force, members continue to fight for a cleaner environment.

The Doe Run Employees Union has joined the campaign. “We’re poisoned,” says Castillo, the union official, “but we don’t want our wives, children and grandchildren to continue in the same situation.”