In a note published in El Mostrador, the Sustainability Manager of Ferrocaril Antofagasta – Bolivia (FCAB), Jaime Henríquez and the Environmental Manager of Las Salinas, Camilo Quiroga “As a country we can generate urban or land regeneration policies with sustainable principles, since everything related to the management of industrial liabilities is also a circular economy that goes from natural to industrial and then to urban use, which is positive,” says Jaime Henríquez of FCAB, a lawyer with a Master’s degree in Territorial Planning and Environmental Management, Environment and Communities from the University of Barcelona. Meanwhile, Camilo Quiroga of Las Salinas, an environmental civil engineer with a Master’s degree in Energy and the Environment from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, indicates that “we have our own feelings about the importance of remediation processes to reconvert land that was initially industrial or mining land or that has some kind of environmental liability and with this remediation process transform it, return it to the city and reconvert it so that the city can continue to develop”. Regarding the FCAB project, Henríquez comments that since it is so large and in the heart of the city of Antofagasta, “it has to be a highly participatory project and that is how we have developed it”. And in relation to the work promoted by Las Salinas, Quiroga reflects that “the most interesting thing is that the communities, over time, 40 years ago, 20 years ago in other countries, asked the same questions they are asking now: Is it important to remediate or not? Or do we prefer to leave this contaminated site as it is? Over time everyone has realized something that, in the long run, is natural: who could oppose remediating a site that today has a risk, latent or not, and take it to a new level of services for the community itself.
