2 Arrests in Home Depot Dam Protest; Take Action!
May 27th, 2009
Two activists were arrested at a Home Depot in Glendale, CO, near Denver, after hanging a banner off the building that read, “Dam Home Depot, NOT Patagonia!” Home Depot is under pressure from International Rivers and allies for its ongoing financial involvement with the main Chilean interest promoting 5 dams in Chilean Patagonia.
Home Depot has a shareholders’ meeting coming up on Thursday, May 28 in Atlanta, Georgia. Contact them (before their May 28 shareholders’ meeting if possible, but certainly during or after as well) and tell them to cancel purchases of timber from the Matte and Angelini Groups (the companies CMPC and Arauco) for their involvement in plans to dam wild Patagonia, and to drop the charges against Earth First! protesters in Arapahoe County, Colorado. Call 1-800-553-3199 (press extension # 5), or send an email directly from this site.
For more background on the issue, visit International Rivers’ Patagonia page.
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More South American Dam News
Chilean Patagonia: International Rivers deployed two large banners at Home Depot’s annual shareholder meeting in Atlanta, GA, USA, on May 28, demanding that the corporation sever ties with the two companies pushing plans to dam 5 rivers in wild Patagonia. Inside the meeting, protesters brought their demands directly to the company’s board.
The action came only a day after 2 Earth First! activists were arrested for dropping a similar banner off a Home Depot in Colorado. For more information on the campaign to Dam Home Depot and Save Patagonia, visit International Rivers’ Patagonia page.
Brazil: At least 7 people were killed when a water storage dam burst, flooding the city of Cocal da Estação, population 30,000. Thousands were left homeless or without electricity. Following the accident, a Brazilian dam expert estimated that 200 other dams in the country are at risk of failure.
In better news, a federal judge has suspended the environmental permit for the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river, due to insufficient consideration of the effects on indigenous people. The Xingu dams have drawn a great deal of opposition on both legal grounds and from indigenous nations whose territory would be flooded or degraded if they go through. They are part of a much larger plan to scale up Brazil’s energy infrastructure through the construction of massive hydroelectric and nuclear plants.
Peru: The Central Ashaninka del Rio Ene (CARE), representative of the indigenous Ashaninka communities of the Ene Valley, declared its unequivocal opposition to the planned Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam stating, that “the Ashaninka communities of the Ene river … Repudiate the use of the Ashaninka word Pakitzapango in light of its spiritual and cultural significance for the Ashaninka People of Peru [and] Demand that any activity such as research, promotions, reports, meetings or proposals that support or promote the construction of the Pakitzapango dam are immediately called off. The Ashaninka of the Ene valley will NOT permit the entry of any institution carrying out any of the mentioned activities.”
Read the full declaration.
UPDATE (June 4 2009): It appears that the dams planned for Ashaninka terriotry in Peru are intended to sell electricity to Brazil, primarily for mining, metal processing and industrial agriculture industries in the Eastern Amazon.