The mayor of Neiva Gorky Muñoz and seven members of his team will have to answer in court for not having responded to the actions to mitigate serious threats. The same thing happens in Tello.
RICARDO AREIZA
Investigacioneshuila@gmail.com
The court-ordered shock measures to mitigate eventual threats of mass evictions and torrential floods in the townships of Vegalarga and Anacleto García, in Neiva and Tello, remain stagnant.
Six years after the signing of the compliance pact, which is law for the parties, there are no representative advances, despite the fact that the threats have worsened and can cause a tragedy.
The peremptory deadlines have expired while the mitigation works agreed as a priority remained in the air.
The first resettlement of homes in areas of imminent danger was frozen on the shelves of the local bureaucracy.
Projected investments with mayors, governorship and national government were left with reserved availability and the relevant advances at zero.
Given the unjustified non-compliance, the Seventh Administrative Court of Neiva opened a new contempt that could compromise the mayors of Neiva, Gorky Muñoz and Tello José Manuel Córdoba Trujillo. In the case of Neiva, it compromises half a cabinet.
The incident was initiated on July 14, 2023. After verifying the paralysis of the agreed initiatives, the contempt incident was opened, which could end with a fine of up to 50 monthly minimum wages, commutable to arrest for up to six months, without prejudice to the criminal and disciplinary sanctions that may apply.
latent threat
The two corregimientos continue to be at high risk due to mass removals, sudden flooding or phenomena associated with soil instability or a potential seismic threat.
The neighboring hamlets, separated by the Fortalecillas river, have been registering displacement of land on a high slope (creeping) for years due to slope instability, torrential floods and complex geological movements that are still latent, according to a geological study carried out by the CAM in 2013.
Over the years, the rocky complex presents a high level of alteration, associated with an abrupt topography (slopes between 30 and 70 degrees).
The two populations, according to this study, register a high threat due to mud flows and decomposition of rocky material. At least 90% of Vegalarga is in red as a sign of high risk.
Even so, despite the court order, there is no progress, confirming a clear breach.
Frozen
The compliance pact, approved on April 25, 2017, was never fulfilled, after twelve technical tables and ten verification hearings. On March 30, 2022, in the final phase of the pandemic, the judicial office conducted a new verification hearing in person with poor results.
During the verification hearing held in person on March 30, 2022, the judge warned that the measures ordered were stagnant, as occurred during the administration of Rodrigo Lara. This time, there was no evidence of further progress in the case of the municipality of Neiva either, except for what was related to the contracting stage for the detailed studies of Threat, Vulnerability and Risk (AVR) in the town of Vegalarga.
In the town of Anacleto García in Tello, on the other side of the Fortalecillas River, 158 homes were at non-mitigable risk. Of these, 42 had to be relocated. The rest required mitigation works. However, with a new study commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Tello, the administration leaned towards mitigation works, which may be more expensive.
Revision
The judicial office demanded that these studies should be endorsed by the CAM and the Risk Management Office from a technical point of view. Moreover, it requested that the proposals and designs delivered for the mitigation works be technically evaluated so that these entities could issue the feasibility concepts. However, the environmental authority did not comply either.
Only until June 12, 2023, at the express request of the judicial office and due to the haste of the new hearing, the Deputy Director of Planning, Deicy Martina Cabrera, sent the response on July 6, 2023. The response only reported that the entity territorial planning, the revision of the Territorial Planning Scheme was advanced, but nothing was said about the AVR studies that the municipality contracted, where it was determined that the threats of mass removal and torrential floods were mitigable, nor did it provide a technical concept of the feasibility of these works.
In diapers
On June 23, 2023, during the last verification hearing, the judicial office concluded that the compliance agreement and the action plan with the adjustments remained stagnant, as occurred during the government of Rodrigo Lara.
After verifying the progress in each of the commitments made in the compliance agreement, Judge Lina Marcela Cleves established that “the new adjusted schedule of activities expired in December 2022 without achieving its satisfactory execution, both for the municipality of Neiva , as for that of Tello”.
The community members who participated, the representatives of the National Risk and Disaster Management Unit, and the Huila Regional Ombudsman’s Office, in their capacity as plaintiff, confirmed that the new action plan was left at zero.
Given the unforgivable non-compliance, the Ombudsman’s Office requested the processing of a new contempt incident.
The first contempt was decreed in November 2019 against the mayor at the time Rodrigo Lara Sánchez and the project manager, Elkin Trujillo.
The two officials were sanctioned with a fine equivalent to 25 monthly minimum wages (approximately 20.70 million pesos each) convertible into arrest, for failing to comply with a court order. Although it was revoked, it remained as an antecedent of the repeated non-compliance by the Neiva administration.
new contempt
The hearing judge Lina Marcela Cleves concluded that the mayors of Neiva, Gorky Muñoz Calderón and Tello, José Manuel Córdoba Trujillo, disregarded what was ordered in the sentence of April 25, 2017, through which the compliance agreement was approved.
The mayor of Neiva threw the ball to his secretaries of Risk Management, Education, Housing, Environment, Health, Treasury and the Director of Planning, as responsible officials so that they carry out all the procedures, both administrative and budgetary for effective compliance. of the judgment according to the schedule of activities established”. The delegation was consigned in Decree No. 0236 of May 5, 2020.
With this response, the judge only linked to the incident of contempt the delegated officials Armando Cabrera Rivera, Secretary of Risk Management; Levid Bermeo Quintero, Secretary of Education; Esperanza Montaño Cortes, Secretary of Housing; Hernando Duarte Rodríguez, Secretary of the Environment; José Eustacio Rivera Montes, Director of Planning; Lucelys Bolaños Cantillo, Secretary of Health, and Jaime Ramírez Plazas, Secretary of the Treasury.
Until last Friday, only the current Secretary of the Treasury had responded.
what was agreed
The original agreement prioritized the partial resettlement of homes at high, non-mitigable risk; the final relocation and construction of a new headquarters for the ‘Roberto Durán Alvira’ school, currently located in an area of imminent risk.
It also urgently contemplated the relocation of the health center, the execution of mitigation works, improvement of roads, expansion of public services and the operation of the early warning system, the only thing that was managed. Additionally, the construction of the rectory, the church and the police station were approved.
The mitigation works include five reinforced concrete walls, concrete collecting channels and filters with filtering material, as well as protection and stabilization works. None of these works has been executed.
in we will see
After seven years of approving the compliance pact, the result is devastating. Mitigation works never got off the ground. Funding is halted and priorities are up in the air.
The foundership
The compliance pact, as approved, contemplated investments initially calculated at 25,938 million pesos. That figure today would be multiplied by five.
Projected investments to fulfill the action plan for Vegalarga would amount to 14,370 million pesos.
The project for the town center of Anacleto García (Tello) would be worth 10,568 million pesos. The resources so far appropriated are not representative.
resettlement
The action plan for Vegalarga, designed jointly with the judge in the case, contemplated a controversial order: the relocation of 72 of the 132 homes in the non-mitigable irrigation zone.
The other 42 homes classified as high mitigable risk could remain on their sites but require infrastructure works that serve to mitigate or reduce the potential risk that may eventually arise due to mass removal phenomena or large floods.
Another 36 homes located at medium risk would require mitigation works or non-structural actions, such as application of the earthquake-resistant standard, proper use of soil on the slopes, reforestation, runoff water management, and sewage.
In the town of Anacleto García in Tello, on the other side of the Fortalecillas River, 158 homes are at non-mitigable risk. Of these, 42 must be relocated. The rest require mitigation works.
New school
The popular action ordered the definitive relocation of the Roberto Durán Alvira school, because the headquarters is located in a high-risk area.
The project cost 3,500 million pesos. The Territorial Risk Management Fund only approved 600 million pesos resources for the acquisition of land that complies with vulnerability studies.
Funding will have to be arranged with the Ministry of Education. There is not a single weight.
early warnings
The only noticeable advance was the Early Warning System installed at the end of 2019 in the Fortalecillas river basin. It cost 104 million pesos. Neiva contributed 54 million pesos and Tello the other 50 million.
The system was put into operation with three monitoring stations in real time. Two in Vegalarga and one in Anacleto García. However, the operating contract became the headache.
Six years after the agreement, which is mandatory, the action plan is dead and the officials in charge of its execution will have to answer for neglecting the court order.
