CUBA: River Project Should Protect Squatter Community from Flooding

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 18 2005 (IPS) - When the sky clouds over in the Cuban capital, the residents of El Fanguito pray it doesn’t rain too heavily. The problem is that their shacks made of wood, sheet metal and broken roof tiles are too fragile to withstand even the slightest overflowing of the banks of the Almendares River.

“If the river overflows, I’ll be left homeless,” said a 47-year-old woman who moved to Havana from the eastern part of the island in the 1990s, at the peak of the economic crisis that broke out in Cuba after the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc, this Caribbean island nation’s former main trade and aid partners.

For her, the only possible option was a small shack in the El Fanguito squatter community that had emerged in a low-lying zone prone to flooding along the Almendares River. “I’m constantly keeping an eye on the water level,” she said.

The local residents’ fear of flooding will be eased once the environmental clean-up and sanitation project carried out by the Gran Parque Metropolitano de La Habana (GPMH) is completed, and the last 10 kilometres of the Almendares River before it flows into the Caribbean Sea are cleaned up and dredged.

El Fanguito, which is home to 1,000 people, will be protected in the future by a high bank aimed at keeping the river from overflowing, Arlé Cordero, GPMH director of investment, told IPS.

Several thousand people, mainly from the provinces, live along the Almendares River in illegal squatter communities.

The GPMH is focusing on environmental clean-up, social and economic development and the creation of a green area – including reforestation, urban agriculture and wildflower gardens – in an area of around 700 hectares that is inhabited by some 190,000 people living in four municipalities characterised by wide cultural and social diversity.

The GPMH initiative is an integral sustainable development project supported by the International Committee for the Development of People (CISP), an Italy-based non-governmental organisation.

As part of the effort to rescue the city’s main river, a two-km stretch must be dredged, starting at its mouth. The first phase of that part of the project is set to be completed this month.

GPMH experts say the river’s natural mechanism for self-cleaning could begin to kick in after the sediment that has accumulated in the river bed is removed and the river begins to flow faster.

This “self-cleaning” was considered impossible ten years ago due to the heavy concentration of pollutants like caustic soda, titanium dioxide, sulphuric acid, detergents, construction materials and sewage.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) “GEO Latin America and the Caribbean: Environmental Outlook 2003” report, the quality of surface water has deteriorated drastically in the region over the past three decades.

More than 60 percent of sewage in the region is dumped into oceans, seas and rivers without undergoing any treatment whatsoever, says the study. But according to Jairo Escobar, a consultant with the natural resources and infrastructure division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), that proportion could be as high as 90 percent in the Caribbean.

A decisive factor in the start of clean-up efforts in the Almendares River was the closure of the majority of factories operating along its banks. Eighty percent of the pollution now comes from residential areas, because the sewage generated by around 100,000 people is still dumped into the river.

In 2003, the sewage system only reached 63 percent of Havana’s 2.2 million residents.

But thanks to a 10 million dollar loan granted to Cuba by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2002, three sewage treatment plants have begun to be built on the outskirts of the city, where several neighbourhoods have been hooked up to the sewage system.

CISP, meanwhile is introducing natural sewage treatment systems in different communities in the metropolitan area of Havana. So far, two are operating, and a third is to be inaugurated this month.

The CISP project also includes community skills training, reforestation and environmental education activities, with the aim of “improving sanitation and hygiene in the neighbourhoods that are involved,” said Paola Larghi, one of the NGO’s representatives in Cuba.

A report on environmental conditions in Cuba published in July by the Ministry of Technological Science and the Environment notes that pollution levels in the country’s eight largest rivers were reduced by 3.53 percent in 2004.

Perhaps the biggest challenge standing in the way of saving the river is raising the consciousness of the nearby communities and getting them actively involved. “CISP tries to make them understand that they must incorporate environmental efforts in their daily lives,” said Larghi.

Towards that end, GPMH specialists offer environmental leadership training in the local communities, especially in environmental groups that have been set up in each neighbourhood and among community leaders, while CISP provides advice and basic resources needed to carry out the work.

“I think the neighbourhood will start to change now,” said one elderly cultural promoter from El Fanguito who is known as Quintanilla. He directs a community music group and participates in the rehearsals of a children’s theatre troupe that specialises in environmental issues.

In any case, conditions are still difficult in the neighbourhood, where the houses are made of weather-worn boards, sheet metal and broken tiles, and a sewage system is still just a dream.

“The best thing would be to move the neighbourhood somewhere else, but where would the money come from?” said the GPMH’s Cordero. Plans for relocating the residents to better housing have not solved the problem, because the area continues to receive a constant influx of people, mainly from far-away provinces.

But an ambitious housing construction programme announced by the government of Fidel Castro on Sept. 1 could put an end to the country’s squatter communities, including El Fanguito, within the next few years.

According to official sources, more than 13 percent of the population of Havana lives in critical conditions, in tenement houses and over 100 precarious settlements.