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In 1934, the famous British writer Aldous Huxley described Lake Atitlán, in the Guatemalan highlands, as “an impossible landscape,” alluding to its immeasurable beauty. In his travel diary entitled Beyond the Gulf of Mexicohe compared it to Lake Como in Italy, which “grazes the limits of the permissible picturesque”, but with the further embellishment of several immense volcanoes: San Pedro, Tolimán and Atitlán.
More than ninety years later, Lake Atitlán faces a serious pollution problem that has authorities on alert: while on the surface boats rock to the rhythm of a measured wave, in the depths it is silently impregnated with the sewage discharges of a dozen indigenous peoples.
“The main problem of Lake Atitlán is highly toxic cyanobacteria, which feed and spread with feces,” confirms Fátima Reyes, head of the research and quality department of AMSCLAE, the Authority for the Sustainable Management of the Lake Atitlán Basin and its Environment. According to biologist Reyes, one of the scientists who best knows the pollution of the lake, “cyanobacteria are harmful to fish, ducks, birds and in humans cause problems with the liver, nervous system and hepatic system.”
After struggling for more than a decade with different strategies to decontaminate Lake Atitlán, authorities decided to focus on environmental education for children. To do this they created a floating school, a two-storey boat where children around the age of 10, for one day a month, leave the concrete classrooms to embark on a classroom on the lake. “We work with children to raise awareness from an early age through practices and research. The idea of the floating school is that they can multiply what they come to learn, with their classmates and with their families,” says biologist Reyes.
Water quality, the main focus of the floating school
During a quiet morning in the upper municipality of San Marcos La Laguna, an average of sixty fourth and fifth grade public school children took their turn walking down the mountains surrounding the lake to the dock where a simple boat awaits them.
One by one they put on their life jackets and sign the participation form with their fingerprint. Inside the ship they are divided into groups, to be divided into different educational modules.
One of the most interesting is the module on water quality and phytoplankton, in which Iván Coronado de León, an 11-year-old boy, is generous in responding to his tutors’ concerns. When asked why it is important to know the environment, Ivan replies: “Because this way we can take care of our lake and continue to live from the water, because without water we cannot live”.
Lake Atitlán is a water reserve of the utmost importance for Guatemala. According to the Global Water Partnership, the lake basin has approximately 180,000 inhabitants, of which 91% are indigenous Maya. Paying close attention, Ivan learns that much of the drinking water consumed by the Tz’utujul and Kaqchikel Mayan people is extracted from the lake, so it’s not just a “scenic” body of water. “I learned about the bacteria that help our lake to breathe and are food for fish (…) the floating school is very beautiful, I really like the lake,” says the fifth grade student.
What Ivan doesn’t know is that two municipalities in particular, Santiago de Atitlán and San Lucas Tolimán, both belonging to the lake basin, source water intended for human consumption exclusively from it. A water that, according to monitoring by the authorities, is highly contaminated with fecal coliforms, bacteria that come from wastewater feces. So much so that, in recent years, children in these municipalities have suffered from episodes of chronic diarrhea which, in children under 5 years of age, could lead to death.
Fortunately, the municipality where Ivan lives, San Marcos La Laguna, gets its water from the rivers that meander through the mountains, eliminating the risk of ingesting cyanobacteria which in turn produce cyanotoxins, microorganisms that can be deadly, and which the students were able to see through the module’s microscope, all the children’s favorite part.
Waste and erosion: the other two causes of pollution
On the second floor of the boat, environmental education technician Pablo Alejandro Tello urges students to ask themselves about the daily pollution of the lake. –“Can someone tell me what organic waste is?” the tutor asks. “Eggshells,” a student responds; “Avocado peel,” replies another. “What else?” the teacher insists.
In his module, Pablo Tello presents buckets with different organic waste, to explain that another of the great sources of pollution of the lake is garbage, but that there is a way to treat it. “We teach them the process of composting, in this case, how to produce fertilizer from their homes. Likewise, we explain the importance of soils, the four types we have in the basin, and some experiments to prevent erosion.”
As if this were not enough, soil erosion, a product of intensive agriculture, is another critical point in the current contamination of the lake. To exemplify this, the teacher uses a watering can with which he pours water on a model of a sloping mountain with different types of terrain. The most eroded part drags everything with it, while the more consolidated part, rich in vegetation, absorbs all the water. “The reception (of the children) was very good, they are very interested in the experiments, which is the most important thing. Bringing them to this experience on a boat, surrounded by mountains and forests, is like taking them to dynamic and experiential learning, so that they learn the advice that we give them and that the basin improves in its environmental aspect”, concludes Professor Tello.
Around midday the boat starts its engines and returns to the San Marcos La Laguna dock. In just one day, children learned, in an educational and fun way, that the proliferation of cyanobacteria in wastewater, poor waste management and soil erosion have degraded Lake Atitlán to a mesotrophic state, or an intermediate state of contamination.
And if we don’t act urgently, there could be a transition to a eutrophic state, where oxygen is lost and aquatic life dies. A very different lake from the one their Mayan ancestors – and also Aldous Huxley – knew, when Atitlán was a pristine lake, with pure and crystalline waters.
