The Chilean Foreign Ministry sent a note to the Argentine government to claim the Vizcachas River, a binational watercourse that rises in the southeast of Santa Cruz and reaches the Magallanes region on the other side of the Andes. Chilean ranchers say that, suddenly, the river dried up and denounce that it is due to works carried out on the Argentine side.
The note asks for background information to explain the anomalous situation in the riverbed, which is born from the streams that descend from the Sierra de los Baguales and flows southeast and south, before diverting west and reaching the border. It runs along the international boundary between milestones No. 70 and No. 71, joins the Serrano River -already on the Chilean side- that drains into the Pacific.
The diplomatic episode began last February, when the lawyer of the Chilean ranchers denounced the striking situation before the Foreign Ministry of his country. According to information from the newspaper El Mercurio, the channel dried up for the first time in history.
"Specifically, there are at least six works that lead and totally divert the waters tens of kilometers from their natural channel," said the presentation. They would be infringing the Environment Treaty and the protocol on water resources.
At the end of March, personnel from the Border and Boundary Directorate went to the area. There they confirmed that "the fact that the Vizcachas River has dried up completely escapes natural causes, and can only be attributed to the intervention of its channel in Argentine territory," according to one of the official notes collected by El Mercurio.
They denounce "irreparable environmental damage" due to the Vizcachas River conflict
In another letter, the Chilean official agency warns of the "notorious decrease" of the riverbed and flow and describes the situation as "serious", since "it is due to interventions by third parties in more than one point of the channel, which are located in part of the route through Argentina, and before entering Chile. "
They denounce that the dry channel caused "damages to the estancia and its owners", since it prevented them from offering fishing service, and also generated damage to wildlife, which threatens to produce "irreparable environmental damage".
While the regime has begun to recover, it has not yet reached the usual levels for this time of year, so Chilean authorities suspect that the works on the Argentine side are still going ahead.
In November 2019, fishing clubs in Santa Cruz had warned of anomalies in the channel and had been concerned about the installation of gates to divert the watercourse, according to a report by the provincial newspaper Tiempo Sur.
A report of the National Inventory of Glaciers, carried out by the Argentine Government in 2018, indicates that the average flow of the Vizcachas River is 3 m3 / s, although with seasonal variations. This work highlighted the importance of the basin which, in addition to fishing and fauna activities, includes in its 2,096 km2 about 60 ice (5.68 km2), only counting in Argentina.
.DB
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