"Colombian palm oil company under investigation for polluting rivers", 02 March 2022

...Oro Rojo began extracting palm oil in 2013 and was, at the time, granted three environmental permits by CAS, two of which – wastewater discharge and water concession – are currently under investigation. According to Diana Triana, a member of CAS’s environment sub-directorate, the company has also been fined due to air pollution.

Local residents say that contamination of waterways feeding the Paredes wetland remain unresolved...

Oro Rojo and another palm oil company, Indupalma, are both owned by Gutt-Haime group, a Colombian business empire currently led by entrepreneurs Daniel Haime Gutt and Moris Finvarb Haime...

...The plant had held a wastewater disposal permit for just under a year when residents of La Gómez, a rural area of Sabana de Torres that shares its name with the nearby La Gómez River, began to notice that cows and dogs were dying, and residents were becoming increasingly ill with skin rashes, vomiting and fever...

This prompted the environmental agency to open its first administrative investigation into Oro Rojo on Mar. 5, 2014...

CAS investigated again In May and June 2016...

In the meantime, its mill continues to operate thanks to a work-around: contracting waste management company Soluxionar to dispose of its contaminated water. “When its discharge activity was suspended in 2014, Oro Rojo began passing its water to third parties,” Triana said.

However, environmental organization Cabildo Verde has also accused Soluxionar of polluting activities...

But investigations into Oro Rojo’s other alleged violations have yet to be resolved, including failure of the company to conduct a study to determine its impact on the aquifer as well as implement a system of water-monitoring devices...

Journalistic alliance Tras las Huellas de la Palma contacted Oro Rojo and Soluxionar on several occasions, but neither company had responded by the time of initial publication...