Lynn and I have completed the five-month Basic Spanish course at the Maryknoll Language Institute here in Cochabamba. Soon we will leave for our active mission site at Carmen Pampa in the Yungas region northeast of La Paz. In the lull before packing I've been thinking about some of our experiences here. One in particular, K'ara K'ara, the dumpsite for domestic garbage for the city of Cochabamba, is particularly disturbing. In writing about K'ara K'ara, I remind myself that the dump will close and that a new dump will open with--I hear--appropriate environmental safeguards. That will be good if those safeguards are in place when the new dump opens, but that still leaves the K'ara K'ara dump to mature as a social and environmental problem.
- Opened in 1987 approximately 7 kilometers from the center of Cochabamba as a garbage dump site for the people of that city;
- Covers an area of approximately 98 acres;
- Established and operated without the benefit of a protective liner to contain the spread of toxic liquids leaching from the garbage deposited there;
- Surrounded by small homes of the many people living nearby, and some directly beside the dump;
- The site of unrestricted dumping, including unguarded hospital wastes and open pools for the deposit of chemical sludge;
- An income for 7 of 33 neighborhood groups by collection of permission-to-dump fines amounting to approximately $87,640.00 per year;
- An income for trash resellers who sort competitively through newly dumped garbage for items to salvage;
- An income for small contractors who buy lots near or adjacent to the dump, build homes on them, and sell them to buyers unaware of the long-term dangers of living next to a dump site.
Court orders have been issued about the dump since 2000. In September 2009 the Superior Court of Cochabamba ordered the dump to close and listed many problems with the dump in its present state:
- Nonexistent drains and insufficient works to capture the liquids leaching from solid domestic residues;
- Lack of monitoring of the volumes of production and recovery of leachate from solid domestic residues;
- Insufficient compacting of solid domestic residues, resulting in the formation of air pockets between residue deposits;
- Nonexistent monitoring of biogas formed during decomposition of solid domestic residues;
- Insufficient coverage of solid residues from hospitals (originally, this area of the dump site was surrounded by a security fence, but no longer);
- Lack of reforestation effort for those areas where material has been gathered to cover over areas of deposited waste;
- Flow of leachate into air pockets among solid domestic residue deposits as that decomposes;
- Transport of deposited solid wastes is facilitated by inadequate cover of the domestic residue as it is deposited;
- Inadequate plan for pick up and disposal of collected leachate;
- Nonexistent plan for adequate disposition of residues;
- Nonexistent plan for recovery and recycling of usable materials in the interior of the dump;
- Insufficient traffic signs warning about the dangers of the dump site, resulting in ready access of unauthorized persons and animas in the area of the dump site;
- Insufficient barriers between the dump and neighborhoods surrounding the dump site;
- Nonexistence of an adequate plan for industrial hygiene.
During our visit to K'ara K'ara, Padre Ken reflected on some of his experiences while living there:
- Some of the older garbage piles are now covered with dirt. Gas pipes have been installed in some areas to channel off the gases created by the decomposing garbage. These gases catch fire and can be seen at night.
- The official collectors of the garbage (EMSA) dumped in K'ara K'ara had a meeting. After their meeting Padre Ken was informed that he should be careful about going up on the dump site because of the escaping gases. (During our visit to K'ara K'ara trucks arrived, dumped garbage, and departed.)
- Numerous people were sorting through this garbage, apparently for possible reusable items. It is doubtful that they were informed of any danger regarding escaping gases.)
- The priest of the parish at K'ara K'ara before Padre Ken was asked to leave because he asked questions about the income derived from the dump and who controlled that. Padre Ken has been encouraged to not ask questions. As a priest, he visits all of the various neighborhoods around the dump, but many of the people are unwilling to associate with him, possibly because it is rumored that he is a representative of Vicente Cañas, an organization working to close the dump.
- The dump continues to operate by the payment of fines from the mayor's office. For any of the money from these fines to be spent, a project proposal must be submitted to and approved by the mayor's office.
- For the dump to close there must be a common agreement of the 33 communities surrounding the area. However, 7 of the 33 claim to have the greatest right to determine the fate of the dump because their inhabitants live in the closest proximity to it. They oppose the closure. In this limbo K'ara K'ara continues to operate.
- People are ignorant about the poisons in the dump and their potential effect on people. Urbanization continues on the slope west of the dump site. People are building houses directly beside the base of the dump, close to all of the toxins. Speculators buy lots there, build homes, then sell them to people who are unaware of the danger. This is not large tract development. Typically, a developer will buy one or two lots then build houses and sell them.
I am very impressed by Padre Ken's persistence in enduring this tough assignment. I recall something he said as we rode in a taxi trufi to visit the dump. "Sometimes you just have to sit with problems, be with them." True, we sometimes make problems worse by attempting to impose the wrong solutions on them. And some problems by their complexity seem to mock our desire to solve them. During our brief visit it was very easy to see the potential for ill effects as I watched cows grazing on grass growing atop some of the older garbage and then saw elsewhere closeby children playing who might drink the milk from those cows. To think about K'ara K'ara is to want to fix it or just walk away and try to stop thinking about it. I cannot stop the garbage flow from the growing city of Cochabamba or the ill effects of the past 25 years of garbage flow, but I propose the following:
- Differentiated future collections to divert most discarded matter into recyclable, compostable, toxic, or safe garbage;
- Incentives for local universities to develop and implement effective strategies for neutralizing the negative effects of the current deposit of undifferentiated waste;
- Broad-based public involvement to provide greater transparency regarding the profit incentives for operating the dump and to challenge the continued operation of the dump site as a cash benefit to a few and a health risk to many;
- Monitoring of residents in the area for possible contamination-related health problems;
- Your constructive suggestions.
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1A little over a month before the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
