Fox News Latino /EFE, 10/18/2012
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vetoed nine articles of a controversial land-use bill passed by Congress last month and harshly criticized by environmental groups.
The most significant veto concerns a clause related to the size of forested buffer zones landowners must maintain around rivers.
Rousseff’s veto reinserted a requirement that large landowners must maintain a zone of between 5-100 meters (16-327 feet) of native vegetation, depending on the size of the waterway.
Under previous law, that requirement had been 30-500 meters and environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund for Nature say the less stringent restrictions will increase the risk of flooding.
