Mexico's Most Polluted River

Pollution turned El Salto river into a toxic hell - nobody complies the regulation, excellent standards and very strong environmental and water laws

El Salto de Juanacatlán was once a majestic waterfall where locals would fish, bathe, and play. Today the air stinks of sulphur, yellow-tinged water cascades over the rocks, and clouds of bright white foam collect at the foot of the falls before drifting downstream.

After years of watching the authorities fail to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, desperate locals are now intensifying their calls for action. They claim it is already too late for 628 locals who they say the pollution has killed in the last eight years. That includes 72 deaths in 2015, the worst year to date.

The devastation of El Salto began in the 1970s as industries began to congregate in the now decrepit town located on the southeastern outskirts of Guadalajara, the second-largest city in Mexico and the capital of the state of Jalisco.

Today El Salto is home to over 300 businesses, including local and multinational electronics firms, automotive factories, chemical plants, pharmaceutical labs, and food and beverage companies. Many are suspected of illegally discharging toxic waste into the river, which also absorbs sewage from Guadalajara.

Activists claim Jalisco health officials have sought to play down the link between pollution and health problems in the region.

El Salto did get some government attention after an eight-year-old fell into a coma and then died in 2008. Miguel Ángel López Rocha had slipped into the river while playing on its bank and ingested a fatal dose of arsenic.

Widespread outrage prompted the government to build El Ahogado, the region's biggest wastewater treatment plant that was inaugurated in 2012.

But even Dr Rodolfo Montaño, from Jalisco's environmental secretariat, recently admitted that it only has the capacity to treat up to 75 percent of the sewage and industrial waste that flows into the river.

The official added that efforts to fight the pollution are undermined by insufficient funds and the division of responsibility between different municipal governments, as well as the state and federal level water and environmental bodies.

Local activists, however, have been fiercely critical of the government's efforts.

Raul Muñoz, president of El Salto's Citizen's Committee in Defence of the Environment, said that as well as documenting 628 fatalities caused by pollution in the last eight years, activists have also detected 2,678 locals who have suffered health problems. These include renal insufficiency, cancer, leukaemia, skin diseases, and digestive and respiratory infections.

Water policy experts believe the solution is simply for the authorities to enforce the existing regulation that prohibits dangerous discharges in the river. However, Dr Raúl Pacheco-Vega, from the CIDE think tank, warned this will not happen until Mexico begins hiring and training more personnel to enforce these standards.

"We have amazing regulation, excellent standards and very strong environmental and water laws, but nobody complies with those," he said. "No regulatory body at municipal, state or federal level has the capacity to deal with that much industrial pollution."

While few residents are optimistic about El Salto's future, some take heart from the emergence of a younger generation of activists who are injecting a new sense of energy into the struggle.

Source: VICE News

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Taxonomy

• Water Pollution
• Wastewater Treatment
• Environment
• River Restoration