This provision in CAFTA allows the Commerce Group to challenge the decision by the government of El Salvador to shut down the company's mine because of severe pollution, which has resulted in a high rate of cancer and kidney disease, according to local residents and government officials. Operation of the mine stopped in 2001, but the Commerce Group gained a permit in 2004 to study the possibility of re-opening the mine, only to have it revoked by the government in 2007.
The Commerce Group’s mine along the San Sebastian River has continued to produce cyanide and sulphur although closed for a decade, Salvadoran attorney Kenia Margarita Ortez Alvarezt told In These Times through an interpreter.
“Nobody drinks the water, but the horses and cows drink from the river, so it inevitably winds up in our bodies,” she explained. “In the summer, it is dusty and the people wind up breathing in the contaminated soil, and they suffer as a result.................
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12214/milwaukee_firm_digs_for_cafta_gold_by_undermining_global_democracy/
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