LA VEGA.- Farmers who’ve been growing coffee, rice, avocados, yautía, cassava, sweet potato and other crops in the community Sabana del Puerto have left their fields fallow, alleging a crop yield of just 25 percent, which they blame on contaminants spewed from the Falconbridge nickel mine, the country’s largest and one of the oldest operations.

In the zone most of the fruits are damaged on the trees, which show spots or burns and almost all the zinc roofs are rusted, even when recently installed.

The environmentalist Eleuterio Martinez said the problem is the photochemical fog he believes comes from heavy mineral particlesfrom the furnace in Falconbridge’s round-the-clock operations.

Today Friday members of the State University UASD and the Academy of Sciences will visit the zone to evaluate the situation, which Falconbridge spokesman Luis Rosado promised they’d comment on Thursday afternoon, which didn’t happen.

The farmers’ fear grows because 96 of the community’s families live in the Las Manaclitas hillside, which is within the new area Falconbridge plans to exploit, and for which geological studies were begun.

The inhabitants, who get their water from the Caño Ancho, Rincon Sucio and Ajiaco streams, fear they’ll be polluted or vanish once the nickel extraction starts.

“It ( the mining company) says they are going to channel the water, when they do that it’s gonna come dirty,” the farmer Virgilio Núñez complained, warning that the risk they live in will increase when the hills from which several springs sprout are exploited.

For another farmer, Manolo Núñez, it meant a loss of nearly 70 percent of the money spent in his last crop, which he said drove to stop growing. “We ain’t planting no more because we explode working and don’t get nothing, the fruit come out bad fro the ground, we can’t plant thanks to faiconbri.” He now makes his living driving a truck.

Yet another “campesino,” Antonio Rosario sadly shows what was previously his pride: “that tree bore beautiful and large avocados and see what they are now,” he said while holding tiny avocados. He also said the trees bear less fruit as more than half fall before maturing and those which manage to ripen do so with spots making them impossible to eat.

I’ve spent all my life here. If it were possible to stay here I would, but to die here I prefer going somewhere else,” said another farmer, Alfredo Camacho.