pinar istek: July 2010

By Pinar Istek

LAKE ATITLÁN, Guatemala—Maria Isabel Quezada recalls that October day, when she came across the contamination in Lake Atitlán for the first time: “I went to the lake in October to visit the lake. So I was standing at the edge of the lake and I saw this thing, you know,” she said. “Just like weaving itself into something nasty”. Quezada is a member of Todos Por El Lago, which is a civil movement, working towards cleaning the lake.

In October of 2009, the residents and visitors of Lake Atitlan were upset with the cyanobacteria bloom. According to Rejina Herzog, a private business owner in Panajachel, the bloom covered large portions of the lake. She also stated that, “It used to bloom every year. People from the lake know that for a long time. But for a couple of days, it would occur but then it would disappear. But nobody really cared about it, knew what it was. It was just; OK, when rainy season stops, when the water gets warm, then we have this for a couple of days, we don’t swim in the lake and that’s it”.

This time, the story wasn’t that simple. The bloom lasted almost two months, resulting in a long list of social and economical consequences. With such a tremendous environmental issue like in Lake Atitlan, people won’t be affecting the individuals’ lives. They won’t be able to provide for their basic needs, such as food, sanitation, health, education. The inability to provide for basic necessities through traditional economic means may push people into illegal activities thus increasing crime rate. In the long run, lack of education because of economic dysfunction might push future generations to illegal actions, as well.

Monica Berger, from Asociation Ati’t Ala’, stated that “It is a social and economic problem first and then it becomes all the other stuff. The real problem with the lake being like this, when we had the bacteria bloom, everybody was affected, from the hotel to the small farmer that sells his veggies to the hotel or who employs his kids or whatever are employed there, or the ladies that sells the textiles. It was horrible. From October bloom to February there was no one coming to the lake. The crisis was really bad. The fisherman couldn’t fish, the tuleros couldn’t get tul out, the textiles… everybody who depends on tourism didn’t have an income for a long time”.

The shift from organic to inorganic waste is another major factor. “Think of 50 years ago,” Berger said, “a family was used, for hundreds of years, to collect all their garbage from their kitchen and throw in their plantation. It was all organic so it was fine. The same attitude exists, except the garbage today is inorganic in a large percentage.”

The action has been taken to save the lake by local, business owners, municipalities and the Guatemalan government. Small civil groups and individuals have been trying to come up with short-term solutions such as creating wetlands or banana circles. Marco Katt, a private business manager from Panajachel, indicated that the tul plantation was practically the best thing that has been done so far. According to United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Guide, tuls “are especially good for stabilizing or restoring disturbed or degraded (including logged or burned) areas, for erosion and slope control, and for wildlife food and cover”.

Before the presidential program “Todos Juntos por el Lago”, a social program by the Guatemalan government, took over the issue in Lake Atitlan on January 9^th, 2010, it was under control of another governmental organization, AMSCLAE-Autoridad Para El Manejo Sustentable De Cuenca Del Lago Atitlan y Su Entorno. AMSCLAE works under the vice president. It still exists and continues to work in the Lake.

“Todos Juntos por el Lago” program has opened dialog between the private sector, locals and the government, and almost all bureaucracy was eliminated to speed up the cleaning process.

In April 2010, a group of scientists from universities in Guatemala, the United States and the Czech Republic were brought to the lake for a 12-day long study. At the end of this scientific expedition, they came up with the following recommendations:

· The monitoring system of the lake should be designed to record the variance inter and intra-annual conditions in the scientific study of the lake.

· Indicators of quality of water that are similar to those of the monitoring of the lake along with total suspended solids should be measured at regular intervals in these ecosystems (3-4 weeks) and more frequently during high flows. The information of unloadings of rivers and streams is critical.

· A water balance for the lake should be developed to understand better the primary water sources and refill of the lake. This requires the installation and collection of the data micro-meteorological stations. The number of stations should be increased, to count not only with the station of Santiago but also with stations in the area of San Marcos/Santa Cruz and San Antonio/Santa Catarina. Moreover micro-meteorological stations are needed from higher parts of the watershed to greater altitudes of El Tablón station. Stations are needed to calibrate the flow of the rivers Quiscab and San Francisco, but is not so viable to install them in the lower parts, that are close the lake, due to the extreme changes in the conditions of the river as a consequence of the flow of waste.

· The erosion of the thin upper ground layers of the pending slopes in the watershed must be limited by maintaining the vegetation and the layers of dead leaves, bark of trees, and other rubbish. Analysis of ground fertility is required in the watershed to understand better some of the biogeochemical cycles that take place less in the disturbed zones of forest in contrast to urban and agricultural areas. A complete understanding of the agricultural practices is needed associated with the intensive farming for the market (carrots, onions, cabbage, etc.) to determine if the organic or inorganic fertilizers are appropriate, the same thing that the sprinklings with organic-phosphated and organo-chlorinated. The same thing fits for the production of corn, an intensive cultivation in nitrogen. An analysis of organic materials should be carried out to add to the floors.

· The residual water processing is needed in all the watershed and in the sub-watersheds. A priority of public health is the processing of upper flows of residual water. The future and existing systems for collecting of residual and rain water should be separated. Studies of feasibility should be carried out to plan networks of collecting and to determine the cost of separating the ones that are currently united – and these costs should include the budgets for new systems of residual water processing (STAR). The studies should also identify future and current populations (including the seasonal tourism) to project the correct size of the STAR.

· The society established between the programs of extension of the campus of the UVG Altiplano and the participants of the expedition must be used to organize focal meetings in communities around the lake. The extension activities must reinforce the coordination and cooperation between public and deprived institutions, responsible for policies, managers, and neighbors through a good understanding of the problems and solutions of the quality of the water”. In this effort, the role of the science should be promoted.

On top of all the existing issues, hurricane Agatha created a state of emergency in the country, putting a hold on the most of the projects for Lake Atitlan. Herzog said that Agatha destroyed some of the wetlands and banana circles in Panajachel. A water treatment plant at the mouth of River San Francisco in Panajachel, was damaged by hurricane Stan, and after Agatha it is completely dysfunctional. According to Berger, some reconstructions efforts after Agatha coincide with efforts to clean the lake such as soil recuperation to prevent phosphorus and nitrogen going into the lake. Therefore it is possible to run some of the projects simultaneously with the reconstruction projects.

So the current picture at Lake Atitlan isn’t all that pleasant. However, people, who live around the lake and who work for this environmental cause are still hopeful. Ivan Azurdia from Todos Por El Lago thinks that “The whole idea is that to use this crisis as an opportunity to transform what is going on there, because basically what is happening to the lake is a micro news of what is happening to the world”.

Quezada from Todos Por El Lago said that, “What we need is a system. The system has septic tanks at individual levels then the water will be moved into a secondary treatment plant that will clean that water, then water should be pumped out not into the river but all the way up for agricultural use and in wetland it should go back as clean water. And this whole system has to be designed for each town because of geographic differences”.

There is a common opinion, shared by many people in the region. According to Duncan Aitken, a private business owner in Panajachel, “The real problem is educating the locals”. Berger also commented that “we come to a very deep understanding that any effort has to be, the most important aspect is not technology, it is education and the social way what you chose to do how you chose to do and the tools and the messages can not be designed only by a western mind”.

According to Azurdia, “The key to solve the problem in Lake Atitlan is not on the water. The key is in the watershed. All the ideas, funding, actions should be high in the watershed, where the problem starts. Because the runoff starts at very high and you have the consequences down the stream. But there is nothing that you can do down the stream to solve that. Because we are not gonna be strong enough economically or physically from the engineering point of view, and financial point of view, to clean the mess. But we start reforesting, changing the use of the soil, transforming that to a place full of trees, a place, where agroforestry is the key and not clean crops. You can do walls. You can protect a lot of things and clean the water, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. What really solves the problem is working very high in the hills around the lake and the transformation from top down, not from the bottom up.”

Some of “Todos Juntos por el Lago” program goals for the next few years include construction of sewage plants, septic treatment plants and garbage management, reforestation, soil conservation, storage of water, little dams to control river flow while providing water, and agroforestry. In addition, it is also necessary to achieve institutional transparency for all parties involved in the lake.

There is also a plan to build a monitoring system for the lake. Guatemalan universities will be in charge of it with foreign universities as consultants. It is a project from Todos Por El Lago, funded by mainly Guatemalan private donors. The budget needed is $300,000. “For this, we will need help from the international community, because we wont be able to raise this just from the private donors. We are visiting people already. Hope to get the money collected before one year”, Quezada stated. While the Government of Guatemala is lack financial sources to take action, according to Quezada they should take the opportunity to benefit from specific loans that Banco Mundial and Banco Interamericano De Desarrollo allocate for such projects.

AMSCLAE is also running its activities at the lake in three different channels: construction of the sewage plants, regulation of activities around the lake and cleaning of the water. “AMSCLAE already built three sewage plants in the towns that have the free territory. These are Concepción, San Jorge La Laguna and San Andrés Sementabaj. The last one of these three plants was already finished in June, but they are still working on their protection. AMSCLAE is building walls around them so that water stream wouldn’t damage the plants. In negotiation with other towns, AMSCLAE wants to build more sewage plants. But the main problem is to be given the free territory to build the plants by the mayors of the towns,” Marvin Romero, sub-director of AMSCLAE said. “They are cleaning the beaches and the water so that they can be used more especially after Agatha. They already cleaned the water and beaches twice with the help from NGOs, schools, municipalities, neighbours, with a collaboration of the whole society. AMSCLAE collected plastic bottles and bottles of fertilizers from the lake. Some of these bottles had residuals of poisonous chemicals. After Agatha they had to modify their plans a little bit so that they can work. We are focusing on the lake not the hurricane. They collected the trash that was accumulated in the beaches and the lake”.

Azurdia thinks that now it is time for action after collecting data for the past four to six months and it is not just limited to Todos Por El Lago or the Guetamalan government. “Action should be the same for everybody”, he said.