U.S. Water News Online
PUNO, Peru -- Whether it ends up a sunny paddle-boat lagoon or a de-facto sewage treatment pond, a new city project aims to solve a pollution problem plaguing Peru's main port on Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake.
Walking across Puno's new "Malecon Ecoturistico,'' city projects adviser Victor Catacora says the 930-foot-long causeway of flagstone, marble and cement will force the city to clean up the 50 acres of Puno Bay it encloses.
A fresh breeze blows in off the lake and yellow-shouldered blackbirds sing amid clumps of totora bulrush inside the lagoon as wild ducks poke about.
"Nature is making a comeback,'' Catacora says.
Two workers in a wooden rowboat scoop up tiny surface plants -- lemna gibba, or "water lentils'' -- and grab the occasional plastic pop bottle suspended on the surface of the lagoon by the carpet of vegetation.
To thousands of tourists each year, Puno is a quick stop on a trip to visit Lake Titicaca, more than two miles above sea level. Bordering Bolivia to the south, the lake covers an area of 3,456 square miles.
Legend has it that the first Inca ruler, Manco Capac, and his wife, Mama Ocllo, rose out of the lake more than 600 years ago to march 185 miles northwest along the spine of the Andes to found Cuzco as their capital.
But for modern-day tourists to get out to the lake's Indian island communities, including the floating Uros Islands made of totora reeds, tour boats must first cut through the water lentils that cover much of Puno Bay.
Although the bright green plants appear natural against the immense blue sky, they thrive on sewage. For more than a decade, officials have worried that the human waste that is fouling the bay will turn off tourists.
Puno Mayor Mariano Portugal started building the causeway last year and plans to convert the enclosed lagoon into a scenic spot for canoes and paddle boats.
"Sure there is a risk &emdash; but we have to gamble in order to win,'' projects adviser Catacora says.
Designed by architecture students at Puno's University of the Altiplano, the attractive walkway is lined with wooden benches and astronomically aligned metal sculptures, known as "sukankas'' in the highland Aymara language.
In addition to skimming the surface, work crews have also sunk 1.2 miles of three-inch-thick aeration tubing that will help resupply the enclosed lagoon with oxygen gobbled up by the water lentils.
"It's like an aquarium, only much larger,'' workman Juan Mamani says of the bubbling tubes. Another pipe running 660 feet out into the bay flushes water in and out of the lagoon, Catacora adds.
But biologist Marco Revollar of the government-funded Bi-National Lake Titicaca Project says the lagoon cleanup is a superficial fix.
"What they have created is another sewage treatment lagoon that will be in effect cleaned by the oxygenation pumps,'' he says, stamping a forefinger on a map of the hillside neighborhoods above the bay. "The first thing they have to do is stop the sewage from coming in from here.''
That's the plan, according to city water works director Rosana Verolati. So far, about 85 percent of the houses above the lagoon have been connected to the city sewer system, she says in her office across town. The city started cracking down on clandestine sewers last year to accompany the waterfront construction project.
Besides connecting homes to the sewage system, the city also plans to build a new sewage treatment plant next year on the south side of town. The new plant will replace a treatment lagoon built on the same spot in 1972 when Puno was home to just 40,000 residents, compared with 120,000 today, Verolati said.
Plans call for the new lakefront plant to treat slightly more than 60 gallons of wastewater per second, nearly double the rate of the current one, which is operating near capacity.
On the shore, across the lagoon from the new tourist walkway, it becomes apparent just what type of challenge the municipality faces.
City work crews are busily building a new shoreline promenade complete with observation decks. From these decks, people will be able to align four of the metal "sukanka'' sculptures on the causeway to the rising sun on solstice and equinox days.
Near the work crews, a waist-wide stream runs into the bay. The water is cloudy from human waste. A walk across the putrid miniature delta created by the trash-strewn stream sends choking clouds of black flies into the air.
"The sewage is still coming in,'' says Jaime Mezarines, a skeptical 18-year-old university student sitting on a grassy spot leading into the enclosed lagoon. He points out another stream about two football fields away that also dumps sewage-laden water into the future paddle boat pond.
"We'll see if they cut it off,'' he said.
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