Progress in River Clean-Up Praised - With Reservations
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 8 , 2012 (Tierramérica) - For the first time in over 200 years, visible progress is being made in cleaning up the Matanza-Riachuelo River basin, the most highly polluted in Argentina, although improvements remain largely superficial so far.
"There have been advances, with the caveat that we are moving very slowly and there are some things that are still not being done, but overall the situation is positive," Alfredo Alberti, president of the La Boca Residents Association , told Tierramérica. The southeastern Buenos Aires neighbourhood of La Boca ("The Mouth" in Spanish) is so named because it is located where the Riachuelo river flows into the Río de la Plata estuary.
The foul-smelling river stretches a total of 64 km, much of it through the northeast of the province of Buenos Aires, where it is called the Matanza River. Its name changes to Riachuelo from the point where it becomes the southern border of the city of Buenos Aires, the federal capital, with the rest of the province, until it empties into the estuary.
The Matanza-Riachuelo basin covers 2,240 sq km and includes 232 streams. Of the roughly five million people who live within this area, 35 percent have no access to drinking water and 55 percent lack sewers, according to the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN).
More than 12,000 businesses that operate along its banks, including tanneries, slaughterhouses and hydrocarbon, chemical and metallurgical plants, dump their wastewater into the river, polluting it with heavy metals like mercury, lead and chrome, among other toxins.
"Since late 2010, progress has been made in the clean-up of the rivers banks, the removal of sunken ships, and the relocation of people living along the most heavily polluted sections of the riverside," activist Andrés Nápoli of FARN told IPS.
Bueno Informal Definition Spanish - News
The southeastern Buenos Aires neighbourhood of La Boca ("The Mouth" in Spanish) is so named because it is located where the Riachuelo river flows into the Río de la Plata estuary. The foul-smelling river stretches a total of 64 km, much of it through
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