A slew of court rulings in Chile have upheld auditing efforts by the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) to ensure that the nation’s salmon-farming firms toe the line when it comes to environmental sustainability.
Recently, the Court of Appeals of Puerto Montt ratified a court ruling ordering farming firm Aquacultivos to pay a fine equivalent to CLP 54 million (USD 56,800, EUR 54,700) for failure to maintain the cleanliness and ecological balance of operations within its Puerto Philippi aquaculture concession, located on Lake Llanquihue.
The case dates back to June 2019, when officials of Sernapesca’s Los Lagos Regional Directorate detected various instances of waste linked to aquaculture activity in the operations.
Aquacultivos, which belongs to the Cermaq group, appealed the fine, saying it had been sanctioned twice for the same event. However, the court ruled that the elements detected in the 2019 audits were different from those found in controls carried out in 2016 for which there was already a sanction in place.
The continuous presence of aquaculture waste was a result of repeated lack of compliance with regulatory duties to keep lake bottoms free of contaminants, the court said.
The court added that Chile’s Environmental Regulations for Aquaculture require companies to adopt measures that prevent the dumping of waste that may compromise seabeds or lakes.
“This ruling, the result of a long legal process, reiterates the need for aquaculture activity to be developed in strict adherence to the rules that govern it, all of which have no other purpose than to ensure [the industry’s] own development and sustainability, as well as that of other productive activities with which it shares space in the region,” Sernapesca Los Lagos Regional Director Cristian Hudson said.
Elsewhere, the Court of First Instance of Coyhaique issued a ruling condemning Piscicultura GARO for repeat regulatory breaches, accepting the complaints filed by Sernapesca’s Regional Directorate in Aysén.
The court ordered Piscicultura GARO to pay a fine of around CLP 67 million (USD 70,500, EUR 67,900) for failing to comply with the General Fisheries and Aquaculture Law by not meeting reporting deadlines for rainbow trout mortalities at its Don Casimiro facility in the city of Coyhaique...
