First modification:
The cloud of more than five meters high in the Bojacá river, which covered several houses in Mosquera, is no longer there. However, the inhabitants of this Colombian municipality maintain that this is not the first time that the contingency has occurred and they complain about the fetid odor that affects them all the time due to the polluted waters, which end up in the Balsillas and Bogotá rivers. At France 24 we visited the site, located on the outskirts of the capital, and this is what we found.
A river with the smell of rotten eggs and a little foam. That is the scene of the Bojacá River, in the Los Puentes sector of the Colombian municipality of Mosquera. Although the waters are still contaminated, the cloud of foam that covered trees and the walls of neighboring houses is gone. And it is that both the Mayor’s Office of Mosquera and the Regional Autonomous Corporation (CAR) of Cundinamarca, which is the environmental entity in charge, worked to remove it.
At first, they used fire trucks to dilute it with water. But, it kept showing up. And they reinforced these actions by removing the buchones, which are the plants that grow on the river. When they are excessive, they remove sunlight from the water and therefore leave it without oxygenation, as Fabián Castillo, Mosquera’s Secretary of the Environment, explained to France 24 in Spanish.
The director of the Laboratory and Environmental Innovation of the CAR, Edwin García, assured this medium that since before the foam grew to levels never seen before, they were already removing the buchones from the mouth of the Balsillas River upwards. The latter ends in the Bogotá River, which is the main river in the Colombian capital and which also runs through 46 other municipalities. According to García, they were only 3 kilometers away from reaching the Los Puentes sector with the removal work, when the foam accumulated.
However, the inhabitants denounce that it is not the first time that this point of the Bojacá river has accumulated foam. In fact, Luz Mariela Gómez, president of the Los Puentes Community Action Board, shared with France 24 en Español photos that show a similar situation in 2016. According to her, the authorities did not remove the buchones on that occasion, despite the fact that the cloud was big. And indeed, these plants are evident in the photo.
Flor Alba Rodríguez lives a few meters from the polluted river. She says that when the foam touches the skin, people get itchy. While the walls were greased after the cloud of foam covered them. And she adds that the smell of the water is so fetid that sometimes she doesn’t let them sleep.
After the contingency experienced at the end of April, the CAR took samples of the water to determine whether or not the foam was toxic. García clarifies that the results are not yet ready. But he maintains that the recommendation is that people do not touch it.
The causes of the contamination of the Bojacá River
Rodríguez and Gómez affirm that a few years ago, the authorities installed a pipe that empties wastewater into the Bojacá River and that from that moment on, the current began to contaminate.
But the official version is different. The Secretary of the Environment affirms that since last year a Mosquera wastewater treatment plant has been fully operational and that this plant dumps its waste into the Subachoque River, which is less than a kilometer away from the Bojacá River and that, Like this one, it flows into the Balsillas River.
In addition, Fabián Castillo adds that one of the reasons why the foam is generated specifically in the Los Puentes sector is because there the Bojacá River has a hydraulic jump to give speed to the flow before it reaches the Balsillas River. According to him, the bump contributes to the foaming.
Both Castillo and CAR add that the situation worsened due to the rainy seasons. According to the secretary, three times more rain fell at the end of April than at the same time in previous years.
For its part, the CAR specifies that they are carrying out studies of all the industries that are located on the banks of the river, upstream, to determine whether or not the waters that discharge into the flow are contaminated. And it is that before the Bojacá reaches Mosquera, it passes through two other important industrial municipalities: Facatativá and Madrid.
For this reason, the leader of the Community Action Board does not hesitate to defend the nearly 1,500 people who live in the Los Puentes sector. She says that none of them pollutes the river, but that the pollution comes from other places and they are the ones who have to suffer from the constant clouds of foam that could be toxic.
#Environment #foam #polluted #river #Colombia #begins #disappear