How Did the River Come to Be This Way?
The Río Santiago’s state of contamination is a really complicated issue, with many sides. For this post I took a two pronged approach to begin understanding and explaining the issue. First, there is a simple breakdown of the industrial and municipal contributors. Second, a stirring first person account of the river’s transformation as it “changed from being a river of life to a river of death.” We have received a lot of comments and emails asking for more information about the Río Santiago, and how this situation has gotten so bad. We are exploring this issue in our documentary, and will be running video workshops in Guadalajara to capture another side to this history. In short, there is still a lot for us to discover and learn, but we are happy to share some of what we have gathered thus far.
Directly below, there is a breakdown of the human and industrial pollution in the river. Disclaimer: there is a real lack of scientific studies so this data is outdated (2003). Currently, the first major medical study is being conducted in the area and the data from an extensive house survey focusing on health issues is being compiled. All information for this post is taken from “Mártires del Río Santiago,” a joint publication of IMDEC and Instituto Vida. For a succinct article exploring the pollution and water quality of the river, as well as the health effects, please check our friend Jeff Conant’s article Not a Drop to Drink.
The Nitty Gritty
Industry: There are three main industrial corridors feeding into the Río Santiago before it reaches Juanacatlán: the city of Ocatlán at the mouth of the Santiago, the industrial corridor that begins in the Industrial Park of Guadalajara and continues along the El Salto and La Capilla highway, and the industrial corridor installed along the southern perifery highway of Guadalajara. For a map of the area, check out the one Arthur put together. According to a state study in 2003 , there were 280 identified discharge sources, 266 of which discharged their waters into the Río Santiago. The breakdown: 36.5% of this discharge comes from the pharmaceutical-chemical industry, 15% from the food and drink industry, 12.7% from the textile industry, and the next two highest industries are paper and tequila factories. Multinational companies IBM Mexico, Nestlé, and Ciba are among the sources.
Municipal Waste: On top of that, from the Ahogada Dam, the River receives 815 liters per second of untreated municipal water from homes located in the southern urban zone of Guadalajara. The waste from over a million inhabitants is dumped into the river via the Canal Ahogado (which feeds into the Ahogada Dam). La Huizachera, another community IMDEC and conversely we work with, is located along the Canal Ahogado. Check out the map! The larger portion of human waste (the rest of the city, approximately four million) is dumped into the river from the north of the city, after the river passes El Salto and Juanacatlán.
The treatment plants slated to be built for the city are now on hold after the cancellation of the planned Arcediano dam.
A Moving Account
One of our planned interviews this coming week is with Estelita, an english teacher and elder in the Juanacatlán community who loves to share the history of her pueblito. Below is an excerpt from an account she wrote about the transformation of the river, a forward in “Mártires del Río Santiago.”
One night, a little bit more than thirty years ago, a horrible smell invaded the pueblo [Juanacátlan]. The following day, the river carried a load of death: thousands of dead fish floating in its water. Since then, this smell has been a much more frequent invasion. There are nights, when the pestilence [epidemic] is so strong, that we have to wake up to plug the cracks of the doors and windows with wet towels so that it doesn’t penetrate.
In a few days these toxics finished the fauna in the river and little by little, the flora too. The flora stopped seeding because the water burned the plants, the women didn’t return any more to wash their clothes in this water and much fewer people came to bathe. In the end, it [the river's contamination] ended our center of life and recreation.
Today, the Río Santiago is not just a dead river, it is a river of death, because its waters are no more than a corridor of industrial waste from El Salto and the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara.
But our our tragedy does not stop there. At the top of the waterfall they built a retaining wall that channeled water to the hydroelectric plant and other communities. This wall retains the water with all the contamination it carries and pools helping the retention of toxic sludge and also contributes to the proliferation of swarms of mosquitoes that attack people, causing them to use insecticides as a means to control the environment, and of course, it also affects the health.
This foul and nauseating water is wreaking havoc on the health of the inhabitants of this place. It means that in Juanacatlán there no longer exists an ecological equilibrium, there is no pure air nor clean water, no more plants or animals or fertile lands. There are no more recreation sources, and in exchange for all that, we have mosquito swarms, congenital malformations, abortions, allergies, respiratory infections, bronchial asthma, leukemia, lymphoma, renal failure, urticaria [hives], conjunctivitis, vertigo, chronic headache, etc. etc.
We hope that this material [this article is the introduction to a joint publication by IMDEC and Instituto Vida called, "Mártires del Río Santiago"] serves as support material in order to solve the pollution situation in the area and so public health rights prevail.
-Maestra Estela Cervantes Navarro, Instituto Vida Integrales y Desarollo Ambiental (VIDA) A.C.
Please, let us know what other questions this brings up or other parts of the issue you would like to learn about! We are so embroiled in learning about the issue that it really helps to get outside feedback. Every bit helps shape our documentary’s direction.
Over and out,
Sarah
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By sarah larock, 4 February 2010 @ 7:25
This article is very informative. Awesome!
I think a survey of all (or as many as you can identify) polluting factories (company name, what they produce, and what they put in the river) would be very helpful. Inform consumers of what they are buying that supports the pollution of their own environment. Also, this knowledge will make Americans aware of the products that have reached our markets so that we can be informed about how our consumption affects and oppresses others.
You guys rock!