Michelle Bachelet will decide the future of Santiago's precordillera this year.
The Nueva Mayoría government has been working for several months on a new amendment to the Santiago Metropolitan Zoning Plan (PRMS) that will affect the entire precordillera of the city — an immense territory extending from the San Carlos canal up to 1,600 meters in altitude — a process being led by Intendant Claudio Orrego, which has been secretive and without citizen participation.
The Nueva Mayoría government has been working for several months on a new amendment to the Santiago Metropolitan Zoning Plan (PRMS) that will affect the entire precordillera of the city — an immense territory extending from the San Carlos canal up to 1,600 meters in altitude — a process being led by Intendant Claudio Orrego, which has been secretive and without citizen participation.
The precordillera is home to the last native forests, such as Bosque Panul, the forests of Puente Alto, and all the extensive vegetation that survives the urban advance in the city; it also helps contain natural disasters such as landslides and flooding, acting as a genuine wall and sponge; it cleanses the capital's smog, providing cool breezes, lowering the temperature, and slowing global warming, while also serving as a strategic freshwater reserve.
In short, only a madman could trade these places for houses and concrete, putting at risk the lives of those who come to live there, while losing all these benefits in the process.
On May 3, the 23rd anniversary of the fateful Quebrada de Macul landslide was commemorated — an event that cost 26 lives and caused irreparable damage to thousands of others. Despite this, there are today hundreds of homes along the path of the landslide, which according to various studies has a recurrence interval of 20-30 years.
Will Michelle Bachelet continue with this criminal urban policy of allowing people to live in areas that pose a risk to their lives?
We hope that recent events (such as the flooding of the Quebrada de Lo Cañas) will awaken the conscience of the authorities responsible for planning Santiago (the president, the intendant, the mayor), and that the new PRMS will halt construction across the ENTIRE precordillera and create a large public park there.
Otherwise, a new landslide would indeed have those responsible for it.
Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera.
May 2016.
The content expressed in this article is the responsibility of its original authors and does not necessarily represent the views associated with the Panul Para Todos project.
The information archived in Archivo Panul was collected using automated tools, so there may be inconsistencies between what is presented here and the original link. You can visit the original link at the top of this article.