Salta: Contaminated Lands Were Bought To Build Houses
<p style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">According to a report from the Provincial Audit, the Institute of Housing acquired, without a tendering, plots where enterprise was working with the chemical element boron. They paid $ 69,000 more than the land was worth, without environmental sanitation. The Watchdog says there was a "loss to a public exchequer".</span></p> <div> </div>
The Provincial Housing Institute of Salta (IPV, for its acronym in Spanish) purchased for the construction of houses, some land where a former Boron Chemic Company (Baradero) had worked. A report from The Audit of Salta indicated that the purchase, which was made in 2000, was carried out despite knowing that the properties were contaminated with the chemical element boron.
According to the report, the price paid by the Institute was for lands "under the right conditions for housing construction", i.e., it was paid an increased price that corresponded for parcels because they had a huge devaluation as a result of the high degree of contamination.
The land was purchased for $ 580,000, an amount that was authorized at the time of operation by the IPV. However, the General Directorate of Estate made an appraisal in which they estimated that, based on the "actual value" of the lands, they actually cost $ 510,136. The difference was $69,000, not counting the necessary environmental recovery.
To calculate how much the environmental sanitation costs, the Audit made an estimate taking one of the alternatives proposed by the former Secretary of Environment in 2006. The analysis shows that "for the recovery of the land they would require $ 8,259,401", as of January 2010 values, the equivalent to January 2001, is more than $ 2 million. According to the auditors, this constitutes “loss to the provincial exchequer".
To these irregularities we must add another, the audit observed: the acquisition of the estate was made by direct recruitment. According to the Contract Law of the Province, these types of negotiation takes place only when there are "proven reasons of urgency or emergency." However, the watchdog found no reasons for the emergency of the purchase. Only, in the resolution do they state that the urgency is invoked in relation to the "need to direct growth and development population of the City of Salta".
The watchdog also highlights the "failure of the destination for which the estate was acquired." Since the purchase of the land, in 2000, to date the completion of the audit, more than nine years have passed and, still have not recovered and, consequently, they still have not used the "necessary and urgent" purchased land.
An Environmental Issue
In July 2001, a court case was initiated following the complaints made by neighbors to the site of the former Boron Plant due to possible contamination. In that file there is a report of the Secretary of Environment, of 2001, which reports that "soils have severe limitations as a result of excessive salt content and boron values”.
The same document recommends, in relation to constructions, "to carry out tests of aggressiveness of salts to the construction materials", because, at the time of the fieldwork, the Secretary noted that "the columns of the plant facilities show obvious signs of alteration due to the salts from the industrial process".
A report of Toxicology and Environmental Health Program, which also appears in the same file, advices that until the situation is reversed, they consider that "these lands are not suitable for the development of human activities such as agriculture".