A polluted lake, a pool of ill will
A dead frog is just one sign of the deteriorating state of South America’s largest body of fresh water.
Gulls swept down to feast on hundreds of dead and dying giant frogs floating in the rancid waters along a southeastern shore of Lake Titicaca, where the algae-choked shallows reek of rotten eggs.
The die-off was the most striking sign yet of the deteriorating state of South America’s largest body of fresh water.
Local fishermen have a harder time finding anything to catch, while farmers who work the land along the shores complain that tainted water is stunting crops.
As human and industrial waste from nearby cities increasingly contaminates the famed lake that straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru, the native Aymara people, who rely on it for food and income, say action must be taken before their livelihoods, like the frogs, die off.
“We used to live off of fishing,” said Juan Quispe, a local villager. “But now we have nothing to sustain us.” The fish have moved farther and farther from shore.
Nearshore fishing was good until about 2000, when locals began to notice that the crystal azure waters periodically would turn a murky green, Quispe said.
Most pollution on the Bolivian side, including such toxic heavy metals as lead and arsenic, originates in El Alto, a city of one million near La Paz that sits 200 metres above the lake, just 40 kilometres away.
Seventy per cent of El Alto’s 130 factories operate illegally and are not monitored for pollution, says Bolivia’s environment ministry. Runoff from mining exacerbates matters.
A study by the binational Lake Titicaca Authority found elevated levels of iron, lead, arsenic and barium in the water, the worst at the mouth of the Katari River, which flows from El Alto. Contamination is most serious in the shallow waters of Cohana Bay, near the popular tourist spot of Copacabana.
To date, the only remediation has been sporadic algae cleanups, authority president Alfredo Mamani said. “It’s like cleaning a pus-oozing wound without attacking the cause.”
Mamani blames the frog deaths on untreated sewage and other waste that distil into a hydrogen-sulfite cocktail.
While only a small portion of Titicaca’s waters are polluted, the affected areas are along shores where more than half a million Aymara people live, he said.
Trout farms and nearby agriculture also have suffered and locals fear the tourism industry is next. Each year, some 750,000 tourists visit the 3,800metre-high Lake Titicaca for its reed boats, pre-Columbian ruins and majestic views of Andean peaks.
Villagers from Puerto Perez, who paddle tourists on the lake on weekends, showered Bolivia’s environment minister, Alejandra Moreira, with complaints at a meeting in May.
She suggested the 46 communities on Titicaca’s shores and islands, which are among the poorest in the two Andean nations, pool funds for expanded sewage systems and treatment plants.
The village secretary, Guillermo Vallejos, called her response worse than inadequate.
“When we have problems, officials come, take pictures and leave,” he said. “Rarely do they return. We must do everything ourselves to save the lake.”