CARACAS - More than a thousand families who lost their homes on the shores of the flooded Lake Valencia, Venezuela's second largest, are receiving compensation from the government and will have to rebuild their lives elsewhere.

The Environment Ministry processed compensations of 24 million dollars total, the ministry's regional director Luis Rodríguez told Tierramérica. The recipients will have to move away from their old neighborhood.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed on the southern shore of the lake, located between the industrial cities of Maracay and Valencia, when it overflowed as a result of the heavy rains in recent months.

The evacuation of the families is being made part of a 70-million-dollar program for cleaning up the water in the lake and its main supplier, the Cabriales River, contaminated by industrial waste, Rodríguez said.

HAVANA - A program for curbing the use of ozone-depleting substances in the eastern Cuban province of Las Tunas has replaced the contaminating gas freon in 2,100 refrigerators in the first seven months of this year.

The refrigerant was replaced by LB-12, a product made in Cuba and improved with Canadian technology. It is harmless to the Earth's atmospheric ozone layer, which protects life from harmful solar rays, Amado Luis, an expert with Las Tunas environmental management agency, told Tierramérica.

Freon is one of the substances responsible for the thinning of the ozone layer over the Earth's poles and its use is to be eradicated by 2010, according to the timeline set by the Montreal Protocol, in force since 1989.

In addition to applying alternative technologies, in Las Tunas and the rest of the Cuban provinces, workshops and conferences are held to promote the use of other substances in refrigeration equipment, said Palma.

GUATEMALA CITY - The Guatemalan company Octagon planted 2,500 hectares of 'piñón', or physic nut (Jatropha curcas L.), from which oil can be extracted for use as biodiesel, a fuel that is cheaper and less polluting than those derived from petroleum.

Cultivation began in November, thanks to 90,000 euros (110,000 dollars) donated by the Finnish government's Alliance for Energy and the Environment.

The physic nut plant has grown in Guatemala for many years, but it had not been studied as a fuel source until recently, Octagon spokesman Ricardo Asturias told Tierramérica.

"After several studies, it was found that used as a fuel it is capable of moving several different types of engines," he said. The oil is extracted from the seeds and then processed into biodiesel.

Octagon hopes to try out the new fuel before the end of September.

SANTIAGO - Environmental and citizen groups protested last week outside the state-run Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) for broadcasting advertisement for a Canadian mining company that aims to remove three glaciers in the northern Chilean Andes to extract gold, silver and copper.

The spot for Barrick Gold, owner of the Pascua Lama project, during the news hour of TVN "sends an unmistakable sign of bias" in the conflict between the firm and the farmers and residents of the northern Valle de Huasco, who oppose the mining plan, say activists.

The groups have twice asked to meet with TVN director Daniel Fernández to tell him that the ad crosses the editorial line of the public television station. But Fernández has not agreed to receive them.

"It is inconceivable that the national channel doesn't provide the necessary coverage in a conflict this important for the community and the environment," César Padilla, head of the Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflicts, told Tierramérica.

RIO DE JANEIRO - The first National Congress for Sustainable Management of Solid Waste, to take place Sep. 1-2 in the northeastern Brazilian city of Natal, will focus on garbage recycling projects that can be financed through the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The use of waste to generate clean energy could enter the carbon credit scheme of the Protocol, whose aim is to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte state and home to 770,000 people, hopes to be a model for recycling of urban waste, and is already carrying out collection based on sorting of different materials, involving 30 percent of the population, Saul Amorim, press spokesman for the Urban Services Company, told Tierramérica.

The activity promotes citizen inclusion, and has organized previously informal waste collectors into five cooperatives.

The conference will involve 800 mayors, business leaders and environmentalists, and a fair will promote technologies and business models for re-use of urban waste.