San Salvador, Dec 7 – Community and environmental organizations are issuing a call for help today amid the slow death of the Lempa River, an important aquifer for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The Trinational Network for the Lempa River presented the results of a study revealing variations in water quality and quantity, as well as the presence of pollutants in this trinational basin, which in the case of El Salvador provides water to more than five million people.
“The life of the Lempa River is practically being reduced to nothing, and this will affect us all. More than 5 million inhabitants are facing accelerated degradation, which requires immediate actions for its recovery and sustainable management,” states the report cited by the newspaper Colatino.
The document specified that over the past 15 years the river’s flow has shown a clear trend of deterioration in water quality along all its courses— from its source in Guatemala to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean.
“River flows are decreasing, and we are also running out of water in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras along the Lempa River basin, something that has been signaled for over 25 years,” the report detailed.
The causes of this deterioration “are all the actions we humans take—industry, cities, commerce—but also fundamentally the lack of state action and enforcement of laws,” explained Héctor Aguirre, manager of the Trinational Border Commonwealth of the Lempa River.
In his comments, Aguirre was categorical when he stated that “the Lempa River is facing limitations in fulfilling its mandate to give us life,” while José Ramiro García, a professor at the Eastern University Center of the San Carlos University of Guatemala (USAC), highlighted the decline in water quality.
“The water quality index for the Lempa River on average can be rated as fair, with values above 60 points. Comparing the data with those from 2010, water quality in the upper river basin was good, with an index over 70 points. In the last 16 years, the water quality index has dropped by 10 points,” he indicated.
More than 5.4 million people depend directly on the Lempa River, whose basin is the largest on the Pacific slope. It runs 422 kilometers through Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, encompassing 214 municipalities and districts.
Statistics show that this trinational water system supplies 80 percent of urban drinking water and more than 60 percent of El Salvador’s hydroelectric energy, supporting agriculture, fishing, and the family economy of millions of inhabitants.
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