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Beaches closed and ports at half throttle one year after the Repsol spill in Peru

Ancón (Peru), Jan 14 (EFE) of inshore fishing after the Repsol spill of 11,900 barrels of oil on its coasts a year ago. “Closed beaches. Highly contaminated by the presence of oil in the sea and sand,” warns the Ancón municipality poster. Around, a crew from a firm specializing in the cleaning of hazardous industrial and biocontaminated waste walks around with hoes to clean the beach, as EFE was able to verify. “Repsol will say ‘no, the sea is fine’, but every time you move the water and you catch a fish and cook it, it tastes like oil,” Simón (27 years old), an inshore fisherman who has worked since the 15 years at the Ancón dock, and now he is forced to work for weeks away from home to fish far from the coast. Like him, dozens of fishermen who lived from their work on the beaches now march for more than two weeks to go deep-sea fishing and unload fish such as parrots at the docks of their city. “I would go fishing during the day and arrive at night; I would go to sleep at night, have dinner with my children or go for a walk. Not now,” says Simón about the forced turn his life has had to take after the spill of 11,900 barrels of crude oil from the Mare Doricum tanker on January 15, 2022, according to figures from the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment. Even so, the elderly and the sinners of the line and hook, says Simón, have been forced to work as motorcycle taxi drivers or masonry helpers because they no longer have the strength for deep-sea fishing. PORTS AT MEDIUM GAS The lack of daily work can be sensed from the Ancón boardwalk, where dozens of small boats wait moored. Isabelita, owner of a huarique (popular restaurant) with the same name on the Ancón dock, assures EFE that Repsol “ruined their lives” and that now they are forced to work “only to eat.” “We are in disgrace, friend. Now look at the stalls, all empty,” Isabelita tells EFE, while she explains that they only wait for deep-sea fishermen to feed them. In the same way, the fisherman Simón laments the closure of the beaches and the situation in the port: “From last year to here it has changed a lot.” “Last year, the beaches just opened after the covid. (In the) first week of January there were already a lot of people. Now, oil came and they closed the beach again.” THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE SPILL The municipality of Ancón told EFE that all the beaches remain closed to the bathroom due to a “contradiction” of the General Directorate of Environmental Health (Digesa), which ensures that three of its beaches are open despite not saying that they are healthy, and due to the lack of a health certificate from the Agency for Environmental Evaluation and Control (OEFA). In this sense, the director of Communication and Institutional Relations of Repsol, Luis Vásquez, assures EFE that, according to the studies commissioned by the oil company, “the beaches are free of hydrocarbons and that the sea is also free of hydrocarbons.” “We have the technical evidence (…) with a sampling from October where all the results are satisfactory for the potential return of fishing activities and commercial activities,” guarantees Vásquez, who at the same time requests an updated report from OEFA of the marine situation to put an end to administrative uncertainty. The lack of certainty after the spill that occurred at the La Pampilla refinery gives rise to the losses that the current mayor of Ancón, Samuel Daza, estimates at almost 35 million soles (about 9.27 million dollars) due to the cessation of fishing inshore, the drop in tourism and other economic sectors continue to rise. Daza, who affirms that the 60,000 inhabitants of Ancón are victims of the spill, in turn asks that Repsol compensate the entire district and calls on the residents of the municipality to hold a “sit-in” on the city’s beaches on the 15th of January on the occasion of the anniversary. While calculating losses, estimating cleaning and repair budgets, and waiting for the Peruvian justice system to rule on the matter, the workers at the Ancón dock await a solution to “the worst ecological disaster that has occurred in Lima in recent times,” as cataloged by Nations United. Pablo Fernández Cermeño (c) EFE Agency