Aguas revueltas

Encontré en oilwars.blogspot.com, el blog de un americano chavista (sí, tal cosa existe aparte de faranduleros como Sean Penn y DannyGlover), este largo comentario sobre el desastre ambiental en el LagoValencia de Venezuela. Es un excelente recordatorio de que si bien Hispano América produce y sigue con tanta facilidad a "líderes" de dudosa capacidad como Hugo Chávez (y para recordar cuan impresentable realmente es solo hay que ver su reciente exabrupto en Chile) es porque sus clases políticas tradicionales han fracasado totalmente en el descargo de sus auto-impuestas responsabilidades:

So why the interest in some stupid little lake in the middle of Venezuela? Simple, this lake has a very interesting story to tell about how Venezuela has been mismanaged and its environment neglected for decades.

As I mentioned even people have driven by the lake many times may have never seen it. In fact that was the case with me. I have gone right by it, probably within a half mile of it, dozens of times on the way between Caracas and Barquisimeto without ever catching even a glimpse of it. It would be fair to say the lake is well hidden.

That is not an accident, it is by design. The lake is in effect a dead lake. Not that there is no life in it at all – there is. But no human being who values their health goes anywhere near it. Not to swim in it, boat on it, or even to walk along its shore. And if you value your life you certainly wouldn’t drink from it. Its waters are toxic. Yet there is more to the unfolding disaster that is Valencia Lake than just that.

For centuries the lake was actually shrinking. The reason is simple. There were small towns and cities all around it, they needed water, they took the water from the lake faster than it flowed in, and the lake shrank. Unfortunately, as those towns and cities grew and developed industry they needed a place to dump the human and industrial waste and as you might guess they dumped it into either into streams feeding the lake or directly in the lake itself. By the 1960s and 1970s the lake became very contaminated and unusable as either a source of recreation or of potable water. Tragically Venezuelans through indifference to the environment and mismanagement destroyed yet another of their natural treasures.

If the story of the Lago de Valencia ended there it would be bad enough. But it doesn’t. Generally when humans abuse their natural surroundings nature finds a way to fight back. And right now the Lago de Valencia is certainly exacting revenge for what has been done to it.

Here is how.

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