Environmental Attorney Álvaro Hernando Cardona warned that the purposes of the popular action established 12 years ago remain unchangeable. The environmental authority, despite the threats, insisted on other alternative options.
RICARDO AREIZA
Although the Administrative Court of Huila temporarily suspended the dismantling of the tourist infrastructure works in the thermal area in Rivera (Huila), the controversy continues to rage.
The Environmental and Agrarian Attorney of Huila, Álvaro Hernando Cardona, not only opposed the annulment requests submitted by the parties, but also accepted the ruling issued in February 2023 ordering the suspension of tourist activities.
The Public Ministry agent supported the position established by his predecessor in 2011 and announced that he maintains all the claims that are the subject of the controversy. In his opinion, they are still valid: “It cannot be any other way. The evidence presented by the Attorney General’s Office managed to overcome all the stages of a constitutional process (popular action), including a stage in which, together with those involved in the process, it is called “compliance pact”, which allowed a settlement to be reached. agreement to put an end to the events or situations that threatened or endangered collective rights, and that is why the Administrative Court of Huila has ruled as it did.
In his opinion, beyond the defense of the environment, there is simultaneously the protection of the lives of tourists and residents against new avalanches that could occur, warned in several technical studies carried out in that area.
“The Attorney General’s Office always insisted that the main reason for the popular action, in addition to protecting the natural environment, affected by the occupation of areas of the Agua Caliente, El Piñal and El Salado streams when they run through the El Salado and El Pindo paths, of the municipality of Rivera, was simultaneously the life of Colombians (of all, therefore collective or diffuse rights) threatened by the absence of risk management (new avalanches),” stated Cardona González.
latent threat
In fact, in 2011 the OSSO corporation, the CAM and Cormagdalena warned of the dangers due to the instability of the land surrounding the hydrographic basins and anticipated the repetition of new disasters.
A technical study prepared on that date by experts from the three institutions revealed a “high possibility of the occurrence of floods and avalanches in the thermal sector (El Salado, Aguas Calientes, El Piñal and La Manga streams) and a predisposition to the “threat of the different infrastructures of the recreational centers located in said sector.”
Historical records, according to experts, confirm that at least since the 1950s, similar processes associated with intense rains have been occurring in that area, enhanced by geological faults and the decomposition of minerals and rocks in the foothills of the mountain range.
The technical report revealed latent threats in the area such as landslides and torrential floods, floods, bank erosion, changes in courses and “exposure of lives and property (Terminals area)”, such as the avalanche that occurred on December 7, 2003 leading to the tourist center.
The phenomenon was repeated on December 31, 2010 with torrential floods and land flows affecting tourist facilities, especially the Guáimaros spa (out of service), Rivera hot springs and Comfamiliar hot springs.
The risk was maximized with the construction of invasive buildings in the Salado neighborhood, increasing pollution because they did not have a wastewater treatment system.
“The area is of high geological instability, it is even part of a critical point where a geological fault crosses where the mountain range meets the Rivera fans,” said the director of the CAM, Camilo Agudelo.
Expected decision
“For that reason, the Attorney General’s Office had to wait for this decision to be made. We Colombians must understand that conflicts like this are resolved and must be resolved in a democratic, free system and within the framework of the Social State of Law that is Colombia,” Cardona González stressed, supporting the measure.
“On the other hand, – added the Attorney General – it is worth asking, as you well point out: if this action was instituted in February 2011, in October of the same 2011 the public hearing of the compliance agreement was held, which was declared unsuccessful because the Municipality of Rivera did not appear by its legal representative or attorney, and that none of the defendants presented conclusive arguments, why to date have the spa facilities, the uses of water resources and the prevention of the risk that have finally generated an obvious and foreseeable sentence?”
Proven facts
According to the file, the contamination of the Aguas Calientes stream in the El Salado village due to the discharge of wastewater from the Comfamiliar spa is proven.
It is also proven that the tourist establishments improperly and illegally occupy the protective strip and the channel of the three streams with infrastructure works that affect the environment.
At that time (2011) it was clear, according to Judge Jorge Alirio Cortés Soto, that the establishments operated did not comply with the technical and environmental standards to carry out their commercial activity, violating the collective rights invoked and endangering the lives of residents and tourists. . For this reason, after 12 years it ordered the suspension of tourist activities (today suspended), as well as the removal of all existing infrastructure works in the protective ring zone of the affected water sources and ordered the reforestation of the protection strips, the subject of controversy.
Smooth the measurement
The challenge made by the first actors involved in this popular action, in addition to stopping the execution of the sentence, sought to review the measure and extend the deadlines. Should the decision be modulated? According to the environmental attorney, there is no going back.
“From the Attorney General’s Office, we have not reconsidered the central thesis of the popular action. Should we be interested in the tourist, economic and social impact of the decision? Yes, of course,” answered Álvaro Hernando Cardona.
“This is one of those situations that should help the entire society to notice the difficult decisions that the judges and magistrates, and the control body, must make every day. It is complex to weigh the interests: on the one hand, human life and health (threatened by risk and environmental impacts) and on the other, the tourist and economic impact),” he explained.
New scenarios
In his opinion, the scenarios proposed in 2011 by his predecessor, Diego Vivas Tafur, are mostly still valid.
“If it refers to the scenarios that gave rise to the action, the vast majority are still in force. As for the scenarios raised by the sentence, taking it exegetically, the truth is we are still evaluating some orders,” he explained. Among them, the order to “prepare and put into operation the Hydrographic Basin Planning and Management Plan (POMCA) in the three affected streams or the delimitation of the water circuits, as also suggested by the CAM.
Dimensioning
Taking into account the location of the tourist centers, the entity requested clarity on environmental zoning and the establishment of the physical limits of the water circuit of the bodies of water as an alternative proposal.
In his opinion, an Environmental Management Plan would have to be adopted upstream of the Agua Caliente stream with its tributary water sources over a ten-year horizon.
The boundary of the water circuit, as an environmental determinant, will serve to define the area that the water circuit and the protected zone must occupy.
“In addition, another risk study is required that allows us to evaluate the conditions in which the tourist infrastructure could be developed in such a way that it does not represent danger to the people who study it. This study must show the type of infrastructure that can be executed,” explained the confirmed director of the CAM, Camilo Agudelo Perdomo.
Since 2011, the CAM proposed environmental zoning with emphasis on risk management to reduce the vulnerability of the territory and the organization of the micro-basins of the sector area, to clearly determine the exclusion, restriction and non-restriction zones on the round. water of the different micro-basins compared to all the tourist projects that occupy the protection zones.
Although Judge Jorge Alirio Soto stopped, for now, the suspension of tourist activities until a new ruling is made, the central order on the dismantling and relocation of the infrastructure works erected in the ring road area remains in the order of the day.
