References
Published by MAC on 2001-04-15References
[1] Salem Harbor Station is owned and operated by U.S. Generating Company (USGen), one of the nation's leading competitive electric generation companies. USGen acquired the facility in 1998 from the New England Electric System. USGen, through its affiliates, owns and operates the nation's largest portfolio of reliable, efficient generating plants, with a total capacity of more than 7,000 megawatts and representing a capital investment of more than $6 billion. USGen is a wholly owned subsidiary of San Francisco-based PG&E Corporation, which provides a full range of energy services throughout North America through its unregulated affiliates.http://www.neg.pge.com/sites_regions/salemHarbor.html [broken link]
[2] Jonathan Levy, et al, Estimated Public Health Impacts of Criteria Pollutant Air Emissions from the Salem Harbor and Brayton Point Power Plants,http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/papers/plant/plant.pdf. In April, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency listed the Salem Harbor Station as the third largest polluter in the state. Environmental Protection Agency, New England Office, Massachusetts Companies Reduce Their 1999 Toxic Releases by 9 Percent; EPA Lists Ten Largest Pollution Emitters,Press Release, April 12, 2001. http://www.epa.gov/region1/pr/2001/apr/010408.html
[3] In 2000, Colombia accounted for by far the greatest amounts of coal imported into the United States (7.6 million short tons of imports), with Venezuela trailing as a distant second (2 million short tons). See U.S. Department of Energy, Coal Industry Annual 2000,http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/cia/cia_sum.html
[4] http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/tab0701.htm [broken link]
[5]Table 7.3 Coal Consumption by Sector, 1949-2000. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/tab0703.htm [broken link]
[6] Table A6. Cost and Quality of Imported Coal Received at Electric Utility Plants by Origin, 1994-2001. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/ta6p01.txt
[7] Salem Harbor Station's four units are fueled by coal, oil or a combination of the two. Originally built as a coal-fueled plant, it was converted in 1969 to operate using oil as its main source of fuel. Three of the four units were converted back to coal in the early 1980s, in keeping with nationwide efforts to reduce reliance on imported oil.
Salem Harbor operates in strict compliance with federal and state environmental standards. Recent upgrades have significantly reduced air emissions. Installation of new controls, including selective non-catalytic reduction technology, has reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 70 percent for coal units and 50 percent for the remaining oil unit. Similarly, the switch to low-sulfur coal has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 50 percent, compared with 1990 levels. PG&E National Energy Group, Salem Harbor Station, http://www.neg.pge.com/sites_regions/salemHarbor.html [broken link]
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, The rise in imports in 2000 was attributable to the heightened demand for low-sulfur coal to meet the stricter sulfur emission requirements of Phase II of the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990. Electric utilities accounted for 60 percent of all coal imports with other power producers accounting for approximately 20 percent. A significant portion of the increase can be attributed to higher receipts of imported coal by utilities in Alabama. The average price of U.S. coal imports for 2000 was $30.10 per short ton, only slightly less than the 1999 value of $30.77 per short ton. Colombia remained the largest supplier of U.S. coal imports with 7.6 million short tons, or 61 percent of all coal imports. Venezuela and Canada followed with 2 million short tons and 1.9 million short tons, respectively. (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/cia/cia_sum.html)
[8] See George Gedda, U.S. Seeks to Protect Colombia Pipeline,Associated Press, March 22, 2002, and Javier Baena, Colombian rebels condemn U.S. plan to expand military aid,Associated Press, February 6, 2002. The reason for the supplement in March was that the $98 million requested in February was to be spent in the following fiscal year, beginning in October. The $6 million requested in March is to go into effect immediately, and be used for training and equipment for Colombian troops guarding the pipeline.
[9] David Bacon, Blood for Coal,August 26, 2001. http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/labor-rap/current-discussion/msg00759.html; David Bacon, U.S. Energy Plan Spells Danger for Colombian Labor,Inter Press Service, September 11, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/ips091101.html
[10] Wayúuis the indigenous name for themselves; Guajirois the Spanish name for the indigenous inhabitants of the Guajira peninsula. It is unclear whether the Spanish applied the term Guajiroto the people, and named the peninsula after them, or vice versa. Deborah Pacini, personal communication.
[11] According to Colombian anthropologist Alberto Rivera, who worked in the Guajira for many years, slavery and debt peonage originally forced the Guajiros into labor in agriculture in Venezuela; the numbers involved may have reached in the tens of thousands in the early twentieth century when the growing oil economy in Venezuela drew agricultural laborers away from the countryside and into the oil fields. By the 1940s, though, the wage differential (in Venezuelas favor) had turned temporary migrant wage labor into a desirable option for many Guajiro. Pacini Hernandez, pp. 8-9, citing Alberto Rivera, Las migraciones laborales de los indigenas Guajiros a Venezuela,unpublished ms., n.d.
[12] Pacini Hernandez, pp. 8-10. See also Homer Aschmann, The Persistent Guajiro,AMNH/NH (Natural History: American Museum of Natural History) 84:3 (March 1975), pp. 28-37 for a recounting of the history and culture of the Guajiro.
[13] The Cerrejón Norte Coal Mine, Colombia,http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/cerrejon/ In January 1999 Exxon received a 25-year extension on their contract with Colombia. In October of 2000, an international consortium consisting of the Anglo-Australian Billiton Company, South Africa's Anglo American, and Switzerland's Glencore International AG purchased Carbocols share of interest in the mine for about $384 million; in early 2002 the consortium purchased the remaining half from Exxons Intercor.
[14] Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Resource Development and Indigenous People: The El Cerrejón Project in Guajira, Colombia (Cultural Survival Occasional Paper 15, December 1984), p. 1; Andrew Wright, El Cerrejón Moves Into the Market,Coal Age, October 1985; Carbocol, Location, General Description and Standards for the Rendering of Port Services, http://www.carbocol.gov.co/a1.htm. In the 1990s coal was transported to the port in two 120-car locomotive units making an average of four trips a day. See Mining Technology, El Cerrejón Norte Coal Mine, Colombia, http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/cerrejon/.
[15] Wall Street Journal, February 11, 1982, June 17, 1982. Ex-Im Bank clears $375 million loan for coal venture, The Wall Street Journal August 13, 1982. European banks also contributed heavily to the project. See Colombia Coal Authority Gets $50 Million Credit, Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1982.
[16] Gil Klein, Exxon Mine Project in Colombia Nettles U.S. Coal Community,Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 1985.
[17] Pacini Hernandez, p. 13.
[18] Pacini Hernandez, 20-22. The sacred Cerro de la Teta mountain was included in one of the reservas earmarked for construction materials.
[19] Remedios Fajardo Gómez, Violación sistemática de los derechos humanos de indígenas, negros y campesinos por parte de la multinacional minera Intercor, filial de la Exxon, en el departamento de La Guajira, Colombia, August 9, 2001.
[20] Pacini Hernandez, 27.
[21] Pacini Hernandez, 29, 31.
[22] Paraphrased in Al Gedicks, War on Subsistence: Exxon Minerals/Rio Algomm vs WATER, in Barbara Rose Johnston, Life and Death Matters: Human Rights and the Environment at the End of the Millennium (Alta Mira Press, 1997. http://www.menominee.com/nomining/waronxn3.html [broken link]
[23] Remedios Fajardo Gómez, Violación sistemática de los derechos humanos.
[24] Remedios Fajardo Gómez, Violación sistemática de los derechos humanos
[25] At the 1994 session.
[26] Ministry of Health Resolución 02122 del 12 de febrero de 1991. The document cites both 1991 and 1992 as the date of this resolution; other documents cite the 1991 date.
[27] The Superior Court in Riohacha and the Supreme Court denied his appeal (in February and April 1992), but the Sala de Revisión de Tutelas of the Corte Constitucional ruled in his favor in September, ordering the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Mines and Energy were responsible for rectifying uninhabitableand high riskcharacter of the area due to pollutants from the mine within 30 days. Corte Constitucional de Colombia, Relatoría 11, Sentencia No. T-528, September 18, 1992. http://www.ideam.gov.co/legal/sentens/1992/t-528-1992.html; Remedios Fajardo, Violación sistemática de los derechos humanos, August 9, 2001.
[28] Unpublished report by Andy Higginbottom, coordinator of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign in London.
[29] Armando Perez Araujo, et al, The London Declaration (released September 2001). The London-based organization Partizans seems to have organized this meeting [Editorial note - it was organised for the creation of this site by a number of mining activists groups]. Two other representatives of Yanama, Remedios Fajardo and Yenis Gutierrez, also are among the signatories.
[30] Unpublished report by Andy Higginbottom.
[31] Richard Solly and Roger Moody, Background: Stripping the Guajira Bare and Indigenous and Farming Workers Targeted by Security Personnel at Colombian Coal Mine, unpublished papers, January 2001 and July 2001, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/action7.htm, and Richard Solly and Roger Moody, Urgent Action,http://www.freeteam.nl/pipermail/plan-c/2001-July/000195.html. Mario Alberto Pérez was working illegally in the school, which had already been ordered closed.
[32] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[33] David Bacon, The Colombian Connection: U.S. Aid Fuels a Dirty War Against Unions,In These Times, July 23, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/itt072301.html; Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[34] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[35] Amnesty International, AI Report, 1997; Amnesty International, Just What Do We Have to Do to Stay Alive? Colombia's Internally Displaced: Dispossessed and Exiled in Their Own Land, Amnesty International, October 1997.
[36] David Bacon, The Colombian Connection: U.S. Aid Fuels a Dirty War Against Unions,In These Times, July 23, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/itt072301.html; Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[37] South American Business Information, June 7, 2000 p1008158u3927, reported over 6,500 employees; Mining Technology put the workforce lower, at 4,600. http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/cerrejon/.
[38] Tom Boswell, Exxon, Operator of a Mine that Colombian Indians Say has Destroyed Their Homeland, is Planning Another Venture in Wisconsin,emagazine.com v. 7 no. 4, July/August 1996, http://www.emagazine.com/july-august_1996/0796curr2.html. Gouyirus testimony is cited in detail in Al Gedicks, The Wolf River: Ecology and Economics,in Barbara Rose Johnston, Life and Death Matters: Human Rights and the Environment at the End of the Millennium (Alta Mira Press, 1997),
[39] Carbocol Ships Despite Strike, Coal Week International, May 8, 1990.
[40] Industry Union Sets Strike Deadline for April 3 at El Cerrejón,Coal Week International, April 3, 1990. The following week the company denied that the slowdown had affected production. Market Impact Minimized in Colombia Labor Pact Renewal,Coal Week International, April 10, 1990.
[41] Carbocol Ships Despite Strike,Coal Week International, May 8, 1990.
[42] El Cerrejón Workers Return to Mines, Market Impact Minimized,Coal Week International, May 22, 1990.
[43] David Bacon, Blood for Coal,August 26, 2001. http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/labor-rap/current-discussion/msg00759.html; David Bacon, U.S. Energy Plan Spells Danger for Colombian Labor,Inter Press Service, September 11, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/ips091101.html
[44] International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General WorkersUnions, Energy Industry in Upheaval, Energy Unions in Action,(Conference Documents) March 10, 1998. http://www.icem.org/events/cork/docs-en.html#2.4
[45] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[46] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[47] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[48] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[49] El Observatorio para la Protección de los Defensores de los Derechos Humanos, Asesinato de líderes sindicales, Valmore Locarno Rodríguez; Víctor Hugo Orcasita; Cándido Méndez; Edgar Manuel Ramírez y José Luis Guete.March 19, 2001. http://www.omct.org/displaydocument.asp?DocType=OBSAppeal&Index=786&Language=ES
[50] Ibid. See also United Steel Workers of America, Steel Workers Condemn Murder of Colombian Trade Unionists,Press Release, March 16, 2001. http://www.uswa.org/press/ColumbianMurder031601.html; David Bacon, Blood for Coal,David Bacon, U.S. Energy Plan Spells Danger for Colombian Labor,Inter Press Service, September 11, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/ips091101.html
La Prensa San Diego, August 31, 2001. http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/august31/blood.htm; Otro golpe a la carbonífera Drumond: Asesinados dirigentes sindicales en el Cesar,PROCESODEPAZ.COM, Miercoles 14 de Marzo de 2001, http://www.procesodepaz.com/notas/Marzo142001/A714N3.html.
[51] David Bacon, Blood for Coal,August 26, 2001. http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/labor-rap/current-discussion/msg00759.html; David Bacon, U.S. Energy Plan Spells Danger for Colombian Labor,Inter Press Service, September 11, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/ips091101.html
[52] See Violence Against Colombian Trade Unions Bulletin. In March, 2002, the International Labor Rights Fund, the United Steelworkers, and several Colombian unions brought a federal lawsuit against Drummond under the Alien Torts Act for complicity in the murders. See Steve Greenhouse, Alabama Coal Giant Sued Over Three Killings in Colombia,New York Times, March 22, 2002.
[53] El Observatorio para la Protección de los Defensores de los Derechos Humanos, Colombia: Asesinato del Sr. Gustavo Soler Mora,October 11, 2001. http://www.omct.org/displaydocument.asp?DocType=OBSAppeal&Index=1166&Language=ES
[54] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm. According to Jeff Crosby, who interviewed Solers successor in March, 2002, Soler has requested that his name not be published in the article, and many of the workers partially blamed Rostons indiscretion for Solers death. Jeff Crosby, personal communication, March 2002.
[55] David Webster, In the Steps of Columbus: Corporate Land Theft,The ACTivist 8#10, October 1992. http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9209/0058.html.
[56] John Coleman, IEN Reveals Mole Lake/Colombia Exxon Connection, June 17, 1994, http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9406/0149.html
[57] Tom Boswell, Exxon,http://www.emagazine.com/july-august_1996/0796curr2.html
[58] In protesting the Export-Import bank support of the Cerrejón Zona Norte project, Sen. Wendell H. Ford, a Democrat from Kentucky, said Our people are going down the drain while were sending our money overseas to support other people,while Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, also a Democrat, complained that the American goods and services purchased with the Export-Import Bank loans came from western and northeastern states: California gets the money, and West Virginia loses the jobs. Whats fair about that? Gil Klein, Exxon Mine Project in Colombia Nettles U.S. Coal Community,Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 1985.
[59] From Alabama to Colombia: Drummonds Trail of Tears,United Mine Workers of America Journal 112:4 (July/August 2001). http://www.umwa.org/journal/VOL112NO4/july3.shtml.
[60] From Alabama to Colombia: Drummonds Trail of Tears,United Mine Workers of America Journal 112:4 (July/August 2001). http://www.umwa.org/journal/VOL112NO4/july3.shtml
[61] David Bacon, The Colombian Connection: U.S. Aid Fuels Dirty War Against Unions,In These Times, July 23, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/itt072301.html
[62] The concept of the race to the bottomhas become widely used over the past decades. See for example Alan Tonelson, The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), National Labor Committee, The Race to the Bottom in the Global Sweatshop Economy; Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage (Boston: South End Press, 1994).
[63] David Bacon, Blood for Coal,August 26, 2001. http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/labor-rap/current-discussion/msg00759.html; David Bacon, U.S. Energy Plan Spells Danger for Colombian Labor,Inter Press Service, September 11, 2001. http://www.globalexchange.org/colombia/ips091101.html
[64] Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle For Peace (Boston: South End Press, 1985), p. 47.
[65] See for example Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Washington Office on Latin America, Colombia Human Rights Certification III,February 2002. http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/02/colombia0205.htm
[66] The Colombian Escuela Nacional Sindical has tallied 1,524 labor unionists murdered between 1991-2000, 299 of them union leaders. Between 1996-2000 another 1597 have been victims of death threats, 141 illegally detained, 80 have survived attacks, 64 have been kidnapped, 49 disappeared. Escuela Nacional Sindical, Informe sobre los derechos humanos de los trabajadores colombianos: 2000 http://www.ens.org.co/infddhh.htm. According to Amnesty International, in an April 2001 report, 112 trade unionists were killed in 2000 and 35 in the first three months of 2001 alone. Amnesty International, Spike in Trade Unionist Deaths Proves Congress Must Stop Military Aid to Colombia, Says Amnesty International USA,News Release, April 30, 2001. http://www.amnesty-usa.org/news/2001/colombia04302001_2.html. By the end of November 2001, 144 more had been killed, according to Colombias CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), giving Colombia the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist.U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP), Violence Against Colombian Trade Unions Bulletin, Issue #1, December 2001. http://www.usleap.org/Colombia/VACTUB112-01.html
[67] Carbocol/Intercor El Cerrejón,Coal Week International, May 15, 1990.
[68] International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General WorkersUnions, Energy Industry in Upheaval, Energy Unions in Action,(Conference Documents) March 10, 1998.
[69]ICEM Update 14/2001, March 15, 2001. http://www.icem.org/update/upd2001/upd01-14.html
[70] Steelworkers condemn murder of Colombian Trade Unionists,press release, USWA, March 16, 2001. http://www.uswa.org/press/ColumbianMurder031601.html
[71] David Bacon, U.S. Fuels Colombias Dirty War Against Unions,Labor Notes, September 2001, http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2001/0901/0901b.html
[72] Quoted in Harry Kelber, Death Lists in Colombia,Labor Talk, June 25, 2001. http://www.laboreducator.org/dthcol.htm
[73] Aram Roston, Its the Real Thing: Murder,The Nation, September 3, 2001. http://www.poetics.org/DaytonPOR/colombianews.htm
[74] See Steve Greenhouse, Alabama Coal Giant Sued Over Three Killings in Colombia,New York Times, March 22, 2002.