Ecobreves – PERU: River Tube Proposed

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

LIMA, Sep 27 2004 (IPS) - The contamination of the Rímac River, which supplies water to the Peruvian capital, can be reversed by running it through a tube of at least 70 km, says engineer Nicolás Morales in a proposal to the authorities. ''The water that Lima consumes starts out pure, sterilized by the high ultraviolet rays in the mountains more than 4,000 meters above sea level, but it reaches the city contaminated by run-off from towns and the liquid waste of 175 mining and industrial companies along its 110-km route,'' Morales explained to Tierramérica.

Currently, water in Lima is treated with chemicals and through sedimentation, processes that ''clarify the liquid but don't totally decontaminate it,'' said the engineer, an expert in industrial materials and toxicology.

Running the river through a duct two meters in diameter ''will have a relatively high cost, but would reduce water treatment costs and, furthermore, would help conserve water, because currently 50 percent of it is lost through filtration and evaporation along the course of the river,'' he said.