Lerma-Chapala-Santiago River Basin
"The Lerma-Chapala-Santiago River Basin incorporates about 15% of the population and 33% of the GDP of Mexico [as well as 1 million hectares of irrigated agriculture ...]. Regional socio-economic development has been triggered by water availability and industrial and agricultural production per capita have surpassed national levels."
via the World Bank
Healing the Santiago
"Industries include those that mainly discharge organic (hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons from solvents) and biologic material. Nutrients are also discharged which cause microbial activity that lowers the oxygen content in the water resulting in adverse levels of biologic oxygen demand (BOD), a commonly used measure of oxygen availability to aquatic organisms"
"Other industries that discharge waste contaminants include those that manufacture electronics, metal working, and electrical manufacturing. Contaminants can be classed in three broad groups: inorganic, organic, and biological. Inorganic contaminants known to be present in the Santiago river water include zinc, lead, cadmium, iron, hydrogen sulfide, and mercury. Organic contaminants include various hydrocarbons and pharmaceuticals."
"Chlorinated hydrocarbons are present and of high concern because very low concentrations are know to have severe health effects. Biological constituents in the water include coliform bacteria, and in this group we might also place nutrients derived from detergents, and municipal waste that cause biological activity in the river bed leading to low oxygen levels. The low oxygen levels may be of major concern to the livelihood of the river ecosystem."
"Some of the contaminants are more prevalent in the air (including the foaming levels often observed in the river); these include volatile organics and hydrogen sulfide. Some foam is also likely produced from the high level of microbiological respiration in the river bed. Some activities can be acutely harmful to humans such as respiration of hydrogen sulfide gas or ingestion of coliform bacteria. Others, including the heavy metal and chlorinated solvents, are more prone to long-term chronic effects such as cancer. Summarized from Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario Report on Violations to the Right to Health."
From Expedition Rio Santiago , funded via Indiegogo
Rio Lerma
"The Lerma River originates from the Lerma lagoons near Almoloya del Río, on a plateau more than 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) above sea level, and 24 kilometres (15 mi) southeast of Toluca. The lagoons receive their water from springs rising from basaltic volcanics that flow down from Monte de Las Cruces. These are located between the Valley of Toluca and the Basin of Mexico."
via Wikipedia
"The most heavily polluted 47-kilometre stretch of the river is located in the central state of Mexico, where it receives wastewater from 33 different municipalities."
via ECC
Almoloya del Rio
"The Lerma River portion of the Lerma–Chapala basin is considered to be the most polluted, especially in stretches closest to its source near Almoloya del Río. [...] In 2005, thousands of fish suddenly died in the river in the municipality of Pénjamo in Guanajuato state when effluent flow depleted the oxygen in that part of the river."
"In the decade beginning in 2000, contamination levels of the river system have again become alarming, with studies in Michoacán and Guanajuato documenting an increase in cancer and neurocysticercosis in populations that live near the river."
via Wikipedia
Toluca & Deforestation
"The watershed of the aquifer in Toluca Valley in the federal state of Mexico is located in the upper reaches of the Lerma River and covers 23 municipalities with about 2 million inhabitants and 10 industrial zones on an area of 2,738 km².
Due to excessive water consumption the groundwater level has dropped dramatically and continues to decline by more than 1 m a year on average. Furthermore, deforestation of the main seepage areas on the mountain slopes and the shift in land use have raised surface runoff, thus causing pronounced erosion and impairing natural groundwater replenishment."
via Watershed Management, Rio Lerma in the Valley of Toluca, PDF, from RODECO
"The Nevado de Toluca park, despite its status as a federal reserve has lost half its trees since its establishment, mostly due to illegal logging. Over 75% of the surface has some degree of erosion damage."
via Wikipedia
"I'd smelled [the Lerma] before, every time I pass to go to Mexico City. It's especially foul at night, when the factories dump their deshechos into the water."
via Toluca Gringa and Global Voices
Salamanca & PEMEX
"Downriver at Salamanca, pollution from a PEMEX plant has killed everything along the banks. There is a story of a boy dropping a match at the river’s edge there and being hospitalized by the resulting explosion."
via EarthIsland
Silent River
"The Santiago River [...] flows along the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico. For forty years, waste from one of Mexico’s largest manufacturing corridors has been dumped into the Santiago.
80% of the companies in the corridor – brands like IBM, HP, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Honda and Nestlé – are American and Japanese. The river has been transformed into a sewer with over 1000 known chemicals, including dangerously high levels of arsenic, chrome, and lead."
via the recently released documentary Silent River
Lagos Patzcuaro, Cuitzeo y Chapala
"The Chapala, Patzcuaro and Cuitzeo lakes; the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary; Nevado de Toluca and the Lerma headwaters are all located within its boundaries. In the Lake Chapala sub-basin alone, there are over 7,000 native plants, in excess of 170 mammals, 525 species of birds and more than 300 aquatic species."
via the World Bank
Carcinogenic microcystins have been found in Lake Patzcuaro.
Trace metals including Ba, Co, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, V and Zn have been found in Lake Cuitzeo.
Lago Chapala & Methylmercury
"The carp breed in Lake Chapala’s most polluted area, an effluvial patch near the mouth of the Rio Lerma, which exits into the lake after starting near Mexico City and coursing through 470 miles of landscape. Lining the river basin along the way are farms, but also polluting industries related to petrochemicals, meat, beverages, and leather goods. Environmentalists use a Spanish phrase for Lerma, 'water for crying."
via Harvard
"The lake is also a critical habitat for several species of migratory birds, such as the American White Pelican, and home to thousands of indigenous plants and animals.The Audubonistas de Laguna de Chapala holds an annual Audubon Society sponsored Christmas Bird Count. In 2006, some 117 species were identified and, in 2007, the count was 125. By January, 2011, some 173 species were recorded."
via Wikipedia
El Salto Falls
"But it is just below Guadalajara, near the famous waterfall of El Salto, that the contamination reaches epic proportions. And it is here that the government, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank, plans to build two dams and a reservoir to supply water to the city of Guadalajara."
"A thick foam chokes the El Salto Falls outside Guadalajara. 'What was once a river of life has become a river of death,' a local resident says."
via EarthIsland; photo by Marco Von Borstel
Miguel Angel Lopez Rocha
Image via La Mendiga Politica
"In January 2008, an eight-year-old boy named Miguel Angel Lopez Rocha fell into the Santiago River near the El Salto Falls. The boy was rescued immediately, but within two days, he had fallen ill. Nineteen days later, he was dead. One medical report said the cause of death was septicemia, a general term for a septic infection of the blood."
"Another autopsy indicated heavy metal poisoning; arsenic in Miguel Angel’s blood was 10 times the fatal dose. The boy’s death caused a shock and brought revived attention to one of Mexico’s worst environmental disasters."
"For local organizers, the tragedy was anything but surprising. 'When Miguel Angel died, an invisible problem became visible,' says Maria Gonzalez of the Mexican Institute for Community Development, (IMDEC), a nongovernmental organization in Guadalajara. There had been deaths in the region before, many of them related to the toxins of the El Salto industrial corridor."
"'But,' Gonzalez points out, 'there is the whole problem of multiple factors: We have tremendous cancer rates here, and we’ve had many, many deaths. But there have been no epidemiological studies, so technically you can’t draw the connection. Miguel Angel’s death is a death you can count.'"
via EarthIsland
Guadalajara
"Like the vast majority of cities in Mexico, Guadalajara has no treatment plant for its municipal sewage, and very little treatment for its industrial effluent. Some 215 gallons of raw sewage flow every second into a pair of canals that pass through some of Guadalajara’s poorest neighborhoods. Surrounding these neighborhoods is an industrial zone where, since the 1980s, dozens of factories have dumped untreated effluent into the same canals."
"Of 280 sources of effluent identified in Guadalajara’s industrial corridor by the Mexican National Water Commission, 266 flow into the Rio Santiago. According to the water commission, 36.5 percent of the effluent comes from chemical and pharmaceutical companies, 15 percent from food and beverage giants, 12 percent from textile firms, and the rest from paper mills and tequila production. (For each liter of tequila, ten liters of vinaza, a highly acidic fluid, are created.) Multinationals IBM Mexico, Nestlé, and Ciba are among the sources of untreated waste."
via EarthIsland
What now?
Read more at Por un Salto digno, follow the #RioSantiago tag, and let us know what you think with a tweet.
About the author
My name is Christopher Reed. I originally from Houston which is home to some 27 Super Fund sites and all sorts of swampy juxtapositions of nature and industry. In 2013, I started a studio called SEEREAD.info where we make delightful digital creations and experiences. Drop us a line at hello@seeread.info and follow us at your peril @seereadnow.