It has been very interesting to see how my understanding of issues here is continually evolving and growing. It allows me to better understand how people here are experiencing the changes in policy and infrastructure that are currently happening and to understand a little better how and why people's perspectives of their natural surroundings change slowly. The following blog is an example of this process.
To begin, this is something I wrote last week based on interviews and observations thus far:
Although there are one or two water treatment plants in the area in and around Tena, there is a serious lack of effective residential and waste water treatment. More often that not waste water simply flows along roads or through pipes directly into the river. It is interesting to me that there is such an emphasis put on not contaminating the river and taking care of the environment, but this seems to only apply to trash. I wonder if this is because it is much easier for the government to focus on trash because it is a small thing that is accessible and easy for each individual to do. However, re-building existing infrastructure and building new plants would be a much larger, much more expensive project that would rely directly on large scale governmental support and action. I don't know if it is just the growing cynic in me or the truth, but it seems mighty convenient to me for the government to portray an image of river protection and environmental ethics through trash management and recycling to allow them to avoid this issue that would require more resources to manage. When I ask people about why the government is not focusing on this issue as much, the response is that the government wants to focus on big, flashy projects that have immediate and obvious benefits for communities, ie roads, parks, etc, because those are the kinds of projects that can help them get votes in the short term to be able to enter into or stay in office. That the government doesn't really care.
But then today I had the opportunity to talk to some of the people in the Department of Water and Sanitation and to visit one of the waste water treatment plants here in Tena. The story I heard today was quite different. I learned from the engineer at the waste water treatment plant that the rivers are now far less contaminated and that the wastewater treatment plants have decreased the contamination of the rivers from 95-98% to the current 10-15% (I am guessing this is a measure of coliform or a similar measure). At first I was very confused, how could I hear two such completely different stories? She explained to me that the plant was new, it was only built two years ago, and that many people didn't even know it exists. In the past, the river was enormously contaminated and most of the people in the area are not aware of any changes and still believe that all of the residential waste water goes directly into the river. She told me that the remaining 10-15% of contamination that is still in the river comes from people who build houses along the river, people who don't know or believe that there is a way to treat their wastewater. She said that the municipal government and the Ministry of the Environment are trying hard to disseminate information about the treatment plant and the importance of not allowing waste water to directly enter the river, but it is just the beginning of this new battle.
Dirty water that enters the plant
Clean water leaving the plant
Based on my earlier thoughts that this kind of change would be too expensive and large for the government to want to prioritize I asked the engineer how they implemented this wastewater program. She explained that although it was somewhat expensive, it was a fairly simple project because they could work off of the existing infrastructure. Prior to the current system each house had pipes that took the wastewater from the house to a central collection tank for the neighborhood and then from there a pipe that took the wastewater directly into the river. In order to implement the new system, they blocked off where the pipes exited into the river and rerouted the wastewater via a new pipe to the treatment plant. I imagine that this was still a expensive and large project but not on the scale that I was originally imagining, I did not realize there was any existing pipe infrastructure to work off. My super simplified idea of what she was describing looks something like this:
When I asked her about what she thought could be improved in the future to improve conservation efforts in the area her eyes lit up and she began to describe her dreams for the treatment plant. First, she said it is important to continue to help people simply be more aware of the importance of not contaminating the river and that there was new infrastructure in place that made this possible. She told me that if she had to, she was willing to go door to door talking to people living in and building houses near the river. She also hopes to find ways to utilize the resources that are produced by the plant. For example, the water that leaves the plant is not potable because they do not add chlorine in order to not harm the river; however, the water would be perfect to clean cars, roads, pets etc and stop the waste of potable water. In addition, the resulting dirt that is produced through the process should be usable for gardens etc and would be an invaluable resource in a jungle area where good dirt is very hard to come by. This dream is in the process of becoming true; the plant is in the process of analyzing the dirt they produce in order to ensure it is completely decontaminated and to become certified to distribute the dirt.
This experience, of being disheartened by the initial story of environmental destruction and governmental evasion and then the confusion and optimism of hearing the other side of the story, was a powerful one. Most of the stories I have heard throughout my journey so far have incited a certain level of pessimism about conservation and about trying to change and improve existing systems and mentalities. However, this experience reminded me to not let go of optimism for positive future change, to always seek out both sides of a story, and to always continue to be skeptical of what I hear and ask more questions.
