Buenos Aires, Argentina – Beatriz Cruz attaches two water containers to his bike. One is in the basket, the other hung from the handlebars. At 62, she never imagined that water recovery would be part of her morning routine. A few mornings, his son makes the trip. Today is his turn. It will pedal around 800 meters (half a million) to the nearest public water point, hoping that the water will be safer than what comes from its taps.
What she fears is the arsenic – an colorless and toxic heavy metal – who had flowed from her taps for years without her knowing it. “We did not know that the water was so terrible,” explains Cruz.
From the early 2000s, the residents of Nueve de Julio raised the alarm of the arsenic in the water. In 2014, the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled that the Government should provide Julio with drinking water to Nueve de Juli whose arsenic levels met the standards of the World Health Organization. Two years later, the provincial government and the company of public waters, Aguas Bonaerises SA, built a treatment plant in Nueve in Julio and, in accordance with a previous agreement, connected it to Ciudad Nueva, where Cruz lives.
Residents hoped that the processing plant would work. They trusted the government and used water. Cruz cooked with it, bathed in and drank it.
Another broken promise
Last December, tests from Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, which cartographed arsenic in the country, revealed astonishing conclusions.
The problem has not been resolved. Some residents consumed waters which contained dangerously high levels of arsenic, up to 36 times the limit set by the World Health Organization.
“We did not think it was going to give the values it made,” said Adriana Contarini, vice-president of Conciencia Agroecológica, a non-profit organization that sent water samples to Buenos Aires Institute of Technology for Testing. “It’s like having an open -air mine in the middle of the city.”
Julia Crespo, who supervised the construction of the processing plant in 2016 and is now a municipal councilor, says that although the factory has been completed and connected to Ciudad Nueva, it did not produce enough water to provide the population.
To compensate for the shortfall, she said, in Ciudad Nueva, the municipality mixed treated water with groundwater. But the groundwater contains too many arsenic, she says, and the water of the plant is not sufficient to reduce the concentrations of arsenic to oral levels.
In March, a court again ordered the government to solve the problem. He demanded that the municipality – among other measures – to deliver safe water to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, to set up water distribution centers in the neighborhood, to launch a public campaign against water consumption with arsenic and to offer free tests and treatment in Arsenic.
Francisco Ibañez, the press and communications agent of the municipality, says that they have respected the orders of the court, in particular by leading awareness campaigns and providing emergency water. They also distributed water to vulnerable households.
Ibañez says that plans are underway to build a new water treatment plant, but we don’t know when the work will start.
For residents, too much damage is already done. The promises are not held. The measures ordered by the court are temporary, says Cruz. The government, she says, has not yet shown real commitment by honoring the agreement to provide clean and safe drinking water to the houses of Ciudad Nueva.
Cruz and other inhabitants find it difficult to trust the emergency offer. They are cautious now. Cruz spends around 28,000 Argentinian pesos (US $ 25) on consumer and cooking water each month – in addition to its invoices for contaminated municipal water.
It is an additional cost that many in Ciudad Nueva cannot afford.
A silent toxic threat
Arsenic contaminates water in many regions of the world, with the most affected countries mainly in South Asia and South America. It is not new in Argentina, or unique in Nueve de Julio. At least 4 million people in the country live in regions where the concentration of arsenic by water, a natural metal, exceeds the authorized limits.
Jorge Daniel Stripeikis, Professor of Buenos Aires Institute of Technology who led the mapping of the arsenic, connects the arsenic in the Nueve water from Julio to the volcanic origins of the cordillera of Los Andes, a mountain range in the western part of Argentina. Its eruption millions of years ago released arsenic, which has been installed in the Puelche aquifer, a source of Nueve from Julio, over time.
Human activities can also contribute. A toxicology report of 2017 noted that some current herbicides in Argentina contain arsenic and are a potential source of water contamination, but the managers indicate that other studies are necessary to determine the amount of arsenic of herbicides reached aquifer.
Long -term consumption of contaminated water on arsenic has been linked to skin lesions and other health problems, including cancer and hypertension.
In 2017, Cruz’s daughter developed swelling and crusts on her feet. Doctors said it was hydroarsenics or prolonged exposure to high levels of arsenic. They advised him to stop using contaminated water. Cruz sold a van to buy a water filter. Over the next six months, her daughter’s arsenic levels fell and skin lesions healed.
But the filter is only useful for three years. She couldn’t afford another.
Although she has not yet seen a doctor, María Patti, 65, believes that itching in her arms, that she lived for a decade, and her intestinal problems are due to the Arsenic. “I drink this water forever,” she says.
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Patti, who is retired and lives alone in Ciudad Nueva, is among those who are entitled to deliveries of home water from the municipality after the decision of March. But she has not yet received it.
It cannot afford to buy water or wear it public taps, where the government provides emergency water because it works on a more permanent solution.
“How to transport water? Empty (containers) are not a problem, but what about when they are full?” she said. She passes her fingers on a skin lesion, trying not to scratch.