The Valdivia Environmental Court left the ruling pending for the appeal that seeks to annul the millionaire sanction imposed by the Superintendency of the Environment to the company Puerto Coronel.

It is a process opened in 2017, when the emission of annoying noises was found and that ended a few months ago with the application of the now contested fine.

The Puerto Coronel company appealed to the Third Environmental Court to try to nullify the sanction for the almost 24 million pesos that the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA) determined, based on the complaint from neighbors who four years ago asked to investigate the annoying noises from the terminal.

In addition to technicalities such as the notification of the fine, in the allegations the lawyer of the port company, Ignacio Urbina, questioned the extension of the process between the inspection in 2017 and the sanction in February 2021, demanding that the expiration of the case be decreed and qualifying the sanction as nonsense.


In his plea and in response to Puerto Coronel, the SMA lawyer, Benjamín Muhr, pointed out to the Valdivia Court ministers that the inspection and the sanctioning process cannot be understood as a whole.

He explained that these are two different instances, established in the Law of the Superintendency and ratified by the Supreme Court, so that the four years since the complaint and the application of the fine is not an argument to revoke the payment of the 24 million pesos.

After the hearing that lasted for more than an hour, the environmental judges agreed, that is, pending the sentence that will determine if the administrative sanction is maintained or is left without effect.