The community of Limpio fights against the leather industry to reclaim the Cerro lagoon from pollution. Herminia Valdez had not seen a fly infestation like this in her 60 years. At the end of March 2020, residents of the Santa Lucía neighborhood in Limpio, an Asuncion suburb, had to keep their windows closed because of […]
The community of Limpio fights against the leather industry to reclaim the Cerro lagoon from pollution.
Herminia Valdez had not seen a fly infestation like this in her 60 years. At the end of March 2020, residents of the Santa Lucía neighborhood in Limpio, an Asuncion suburb, had to keep their windows closed because of insects, and the smell of rottenness. Ventilating spaces to avoid contagion of covid-19 as requested on TV was impossible.
Soon, they began to experience itchy eyes, headaches, and nausea. Neighbors toured the neighborhood in search of the source of this collective unrest, and they found dead fish in the Cerro lagoon, so numerous that they could not be counted.
A synopsis of fish kill in Cerro lagoon: C9N TV news reported on Sunday, April 26th. The following day, MADES, Ministerio del Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible [Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development], responded with a statement that verified a toxic fluid leak from the Waltrading SA tannery that flowed into the lagoon which could have affected the fish, and also, that the company had a direct involvement in another case.
The Cerro lagoon is about 300 meters from the San Francisco stream, one of the tributaries of the Paraguay River. It covers part of the Santa Lucía, and San Francisco de Piquete Cué neighborhoods in Limpio, 30 kilometers from Asunción.
MADES intervention did not affect the direction of things. The villagers continued to suffer from the pestilence of flies and foul smells that ruined many family meals. Four months later, the deterioration of the lagoon went beyond the dead catfish.
The polluted lagoon that attracts tourists
The Cerro Lagoon in the Paraguayan city of Limpio is sharply divided into two parts: one purple, one blue. One part emits a foul odor, the other odorless. With this caption, actor Leonardo Di Caprio shared on Instagram a photo of the lagoon taken by Jorge Saenz in mid-August, a photographer for the Associated Press (AP).
The division he mentions is a raised dirt road that businessmen from the Piquete Cué area had built higher than the lagoon as an embankment for their sand trucks and leather transport trucks to travel on. For them, it was more practical to make an embankment above the water body rather than a bridge. It was also more economical for them to dump waste into the lagoon, and thereby contaminating an entire community.
Rufino Leguizamón, a 50-year-old lifelong resident of Santa Lucia, recalls that the Hollywood star’s publication resulted in a sudden interest in the lagoon: “The lagoon became famous after it appeared in Leonardo Di Caprio’s post” people claimed. They came every Sunday to take pictures as if it were something nice, but many suffered from the nauseating smell. He also remembers that prior to the pollution, people went fishing in the Cerro lagoon; that there were herons, Mbiguás, Kyja (fake otter), Yacaré Yrupe.
On August 21st, MADES canceled the environmental impact statement (environmental license) of Waltrading, a Brazilian firm, six days after Di Caprio shared the photo which was four months after the complaints from neighbors began. It was a relief to the community, although the problems continued.
“This is how we are, vigilant all the time, because they have previously been forbidden to work, but continue to do so. They get underway about midnight, but we can tell by the smell. It is maddening,” Rufino says.
It is a hot Sunday in late November. Rufino accompanies Herminia to an interview that they both grant at the chapel of Santa Lucía, the patron saint of the community. They are pioneers of the “Defensores de la Laguna Cerro” [“Defenders of Laguna Cerro”], a neighborhood commission that the mayor of Limpio, Carlos Palacios, refuses to recognize, but that is known by people in and outside of the city.
Defenders claim the right of the community to live in a healthy environment. They want the lagoon to be a tourist attraction again, but not because of the pollution.
Profits at the expense of the environment and people’s health
The Piquete Cué lagoon is surrounded by the Waltrading, and Lecom SA tanneries. In Paraguay, the leather industry has produced an average of 110 million dollars annually from 2015 to 2019 despite the fact that the value of exports decreased 60% in the last five years. The sector is part of the meat agribusiness, one of the pillars of economic activity in continuous expansion and of higher profitability of the country, which explains its state of being a force despite its environmental damage.
The profit at the expense of the environment is the high price paid by around 200 families affected by the pollution of the Cerro lagoon. The analysis of the water carried out by MADES’s laboratory showed results of high pollution with salts used for the preservation of leather such as sodium chloride, and sodium sulfate. It also detected high nitrogen content from the decomposition of solid waste from leather, as well as the fish killed by pollution. “This infusion has a concentration of non-endemic chemicals into the ecosystem taking a heavy toll. In a relatively short period which was not sufficient to allow time for self-purification, a total imbalance has occurred in the system,” the report details.
It explains the reddish color that the lagoon took was caused by the invasion of cyanobacteria. These organisms feed on nitrogen and phosphorus and can be lethal to animals and humans depending on the degree of concentration and exposure.
The impact of the tanneries is beyond what can be seen. A high concentration of chlorides can cause groundwater salinity, a concern of neighbors due to wells that exist at some homes. Another problem is the unpleasant odors they release. Elevated levels of hydrogen sulfide in the air can cause eye irritation and respiratory tract problems. Herminia asked MADES for an air quality analysis, but had no reply.
MADES allowed the tannery to operate despite knowing the risk.
When the Paraguay river rises, the water reaches Rufino’s house. He fears that the next flood will bring the waste from Laguna Cerro.
“It will be an environmental catastrophe if the flood comes with the pollution. That is the concern of the residents here,” he says while adjusting his Cerro Porteño mask (a popular soccer club nationwide).
MADES has been aware of this risk, but allowed Waltrading to function anyway. The statement is derived from an analysis of IDEA, Instituto de Derecho y Economía Ambiental [Environmental Law and Economics Institute], to the documents of the summary to the company. It points out that in May 2019, when the factory was still under construction, auditors warned the treatment plant was flooded by the San Francisco stream, and that the installation should redesigned because a flood could disperse the pollution over the area.
The main assertion of an NGO specialized in environmental law is that MADES never collected samples of Waltrading’s discharge to demonstrate culpability, taking into account that the Lecom tannery is also nearby. Technicians only sampled the water, which showed pollution by unhealthy leather preservatives.
In fact, the company’s lawyer, Bernando Villalba, maintains that his client does not use these substances to tan leather. In statements to the press, he cited an analysis carried out by INTN, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología, Normalización y Metrología [National Institute of Technology, Standardization, and Metrology] that concluded that “there is neither lime, nor sodium sulfide in the lagoon which Waltrading uses”. The former Chartist deputy indicated that the results of this study are part of the fiscal investigation folder.
Waltrading uses this argument to reject the charges that MADES lodged against it at the conclusion of the summary for the pollution of Piquete Cué. The measures consist of a fine of 1.6 billion guaraníes (USD 227,000), and the presentation of a remediation plan for the lagoon. That fine represents 20% of the company’s exports last year which was USD 1,140,345. The money collected as a fine is destined to the general budget of the institution, and it enters as “Source 30″.
Neighbors consider that the company has the right to defend itself, but confirm that it polluted the waters with the consent of MADES and of the mayor of Limpio whom they accuse of using Piquete Cué as the city’s “garbage dump”.
“We are 99% sure that Waltrading is responsible. We have photos and videos of the time they started dumping their waste into the lagoon. The company started working in February of this year, and within two months, we noticed pollution. We saw that they were even working in two shifts since the pandemic began,” Rufino says.
The Prosecutor’s Office charged the businessman, Rogelio Ferreira Martins, owner of Waltrading, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal processing of waste, and for damage to natural environment. The company had another tannery in San Antonio, also near Asuncion which was suspended in 2016 by the then SEAM (now the MADES) for polluting the Guasu Stream. In March of this year, the auditors reaffirmed that the business, as well as others dumped their waste into the river.
The director of Environmental Impact Assessment of MADES, Carolina Pedrozo, was also charged for allowing the road for trucks. Pedrozo had responded to the Comisión Vecinal Pro Camino Industrial del Barrio San Francisco [Barrio San Francisco Neighborhood Pro Road Industrial Commission] that they did not require an environmental license to open a road for public use on private property, a pathway which has ended up splitting the Cerro lagoon in half with its embankment.
Recover the lagoon for the people
It is almost noon on Sunday, November 22. Herminia walks on the embankment that divides Cerro Lagoon in half; it no longer has a reddish color in one part, nor does it smell rotten. She tells us that the rains of the last few days helped. She notes that on the other side of the lagoon, which is still without water after months of drought, vegetation begins to sprout. She hopes that this lagoon will be filled with alligators, and fish as before.
A budget is needed for that to happen. MADES’s Biodiversity Director, Darío Mandelburger, says that the institution does not have the resources to recover the lagoon, and this is the reason why they asked binational companies for financial help. The government announced that Itaipu would support the remediation of the lagoon with its specialists in water channels, and the Attorney General’s Office would continue with the legal action against Waltrading to recover the investment in those projects with the money collected with those fines.
Herminia bluntly says, “We have already been in this fight for eight months, and we are going to continue until the end, when we recover our lagoon, and when that company leaves.”
A motorcyclist asks how to get to a neighborhood settlement. “Lugar porãite vaekue – It was such a beautiful place,” he says, looking at the lagoon. Herminia hopes it turns out to be like that again.