Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador unite to clean up polluted river

Mayors and border communities of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador joined together this Monday in Citalá, northern Salvadoran, to clean up the tri-national Lempa River, an important water supplier in the region, on the International Day of Action for Rivers.

“We started cleaning the river from several points as part of a cooperative effort between municipal administrations,” Héctor Aguirre, manager of the Rio Lempa Trinational Border Commonwealth, the main autonomous body that manages the river, told AFP.

About 95.5 km north of San Salvador, in the city of Citalá, Mayor Luis Ochoa along with his Honduran counterpart Ocotepeque, Israel Aguilar, and local residents collected plastic bottles. On the Guatemalan side, in Esquipulas, Mayor Carlos Lapola Rodríguez also did the same.

“The idea is that we all come together to rescue the river that is a source of water for crops and for people,” said Aguilar, 56.

For Ochoa, 48, the step taken by the border municipalities is of “great significance” because the water of the Lempa River becomes “potable” for the Salvadoran capital.

“If no corrective action is taken, in addition to being a polluted river, in a few decades it will be an intermittent river due to the effects of climate change,” Aguirre warned.

“I participate in the cleanup because the Lempa River helps food production and it must be a safe inheritance for the new generations,” said José Sandoval, a 30-year-old carrier from Citalá.

The Lempa is the largest of the Pacific slopes. Every year it suffers the death of its species by the waters of coffee processing, one of the main agricultural activities in the area.

It is born in the mountains of the Guatemalan municipality of Olopa at an altitude of 1,500 meters, and its 422 kilometers cover the territory of Guatemala (30.4 km), Honduras (31.4 km) and El Salvador (360.2 km), where it flows into the Pacific.

The Lempa is a source of life for the populations it passes through: it is used for fishing, to irrigate crops, it feeds hydroelectric plants and, after being treated, it supplies drinking water to much of El Salvador, where most of its extension is located.

El Lempa is strategic for El Salvador, which has four hydroelectric plants that produce 38% of the country's energy demand, and supplies water to more than one million inhabitants, of the country's six million inhabitants.

cmm/mav/atm