It is not a secret that the Bogota River is polluted; but the tributary that runs in front of the house of Mauricio Franco, embedded in the stones of Suesca third municipality of Cundinamarca through which this channel appears after birth- used to flow intact. “It’s still a living river,” he describes.
That is why, a year ago, she was shocked to see him come down with a gray cream, giving off a nauseating smell. “Black as a cloaca,” he recalls. His reaction, moved by passions as he himself affirms, was to pursue the reason upstream. With a camera in hand, he boarded his car and let the bed guide him to the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Choconta. Sewage flowed out of a drain and flowed into the river.
He sent the video and the photographs he took to the Autonomous Regional Corporation of Cundinamarca (CAR) in an email entitled “Reporting pollution in the upper Bogotá river basin.” The answers he received did not leave him satisfied.
They had visited the site and would take action on the matter, but the stain in the water passed, as well as the trouble and the months until a few days ago when, like a déjà vu , the story he repeated. Mauricio went out again to hunt down the root of the problem and found himself in the same place.
This photo was taken on February 26, and shows the black waters that flow on the right bank of the river. Putting together their evidence, the suspicion that “the WWTP is discharging its sewage into the Bogota River every time it is in distress” became more intense.
In fact, he is not the only one with that certainty. When the video of Mauricio went viral through networks, other residents of the upper basin joined the complaints. Among them Roberto Zuluaga, who lives in Choconta on the banks of the river, which has traveled 18 kilometers since that time.
The problem, says Zuluaga, “gets worse on Fridays at about four in the afternoon, when the control bodies are not there. The WWTP takes advantage to discharge waste into the river : chemicals such as caustic soda and other leather treatments used by tanneries. All the black waters of Villapinzon, which has no plant. Even dead animals I have seen floating . “
