A dirge for Atitlan, the jewel of Guatemala

By Benedict Moran

NEW YORK, Dec. 18 -- Felicia Ujtan, a Mayan spiritual healer, often goes down to the shores of Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala, and prays for the lake’s forgiveness. What Ujtan finds there, says an acquaintance, is a green, swampy, fetid body of water.

“In Mayan cosmology, the lake is a grandmother, and it is alive,” said Monica Berger, an anthropologist in Guatemala who works near the lake and who recounted the story of Ujtan’s experiences. “It is really contaminated - it’s sick.”

After years of contamination from nearby communities, pollution in the once-blue Lake Atitlan recently triggered an explosive growth of cyanobacteria, a microbe that forms large beds of unslightly green algae. It turned a proud tourism attraction into a septic embarrassment.

The change took surrounding communities completely by surprise.

“The lake went from relatively normal to a total mass of green algae,” said Brad Busenius, a 31-year-old American who lives on the Lake. “That happened in about three weeks' time.”

“There’s this rotten seaweed smell - and that’s new,” he said. “I’ve never smelled anything like that in the past, it smells like a swamp.”

The cause of the growth is rooted in the peculiar geology of Atitlan. It is the deepest lake in Central America, at approximately 1,100 feet. It is also an endorheic lake, meaning it is located in a closed drainage basin. Pollution simply decomposes or sinks to the bottom to remain indefinitely.

Volcanic soil around the lake already provides numerous sources of phosphorous and nitrogen, the critical ingredients that are needed for the putrescent bacteria to develop.

But these nutrients don't exist at levels that would naturally cause a bloom. Instead, erosion from nearby road construction, and from Hurricane Stan in October 2005, caused a surge of this soil to enter the lake and a spike in the levels of phosphorous. Also, many water treatment plants around the lake are inoperative after years of neglect, leading some of the 400,000 households around the lake to dump sewage directly into its waters.

The most significant source of pollution, though, is run-off from the region’s industrial and family-run farms. Despite an adequate level of phosphorous in the soil, farmers use a government-distributed mixture of 15 percent potassium, 15 percent nitrogen, and 15 percent phosphorous that is given away free of charge.

“There has been no technological transfer to make sure that those who do use [the fertilizer] use it appropriately,” said Berger, the anthropologist. “In reality, of course, they should not apply any phosphorous.”

Though a preliminary bacteriological test led local scientists to believe that the blooming strand of bacteria was toxic – and led many journalists, including one from Time.com, to incorrectly assert that it was – recent tests from the University of California - Davis showed that the algae bloom is not a health risk.

But scientists warned that more harmful strains could still develop. As many nearby residents get their drinking water from the lake, the spread of toxic bacteria could be disastrous.

“If this one isn’t toxic, it still doesn’t mean that next year, another species that takes over might be toxic,” said Eliska Rejmankova, a scientist who worked on the study.

Ivan Azurdia, a development worker who is coordinating a $130 million government action plan, said the situation is set to get worse before improving. The only effective cleanup method is to let the bacteria eat their way through the lake’s stockpile of phosphorous.

“It is estimated that if we do everything correctly now – we will have this problem for another seven years,” Azurdia said.

Thirty-four solutions have been proposed by the government, including the installation of septic tanks, fixing the wastewater treatment plants, managing wetlands, and halting the use of phosphorous-based fertilizer in nearby communities.

A similar approach was used when Lake Tahoe in became polluted after years of sewage contamination in the 1950s. Today, Tahoe is known for the clarity of its water.

International donors have stepped in to help fund the response. Spain pledged $10 million for water and sanitation projects, while USAID, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and a few others pledged less, according to Ana Lucia Orozco, who is coordinating the donor response at the UNDP.

But their contributions remain small. “We’re not even near covering the whole plan,” Orozco said.

Meanwhile, residents on Atitlan continue to wait until someone steps in.

“There is a lot of frustration,” said Busenius, the American resident.

“People want to do something, but they just don’t know what to do."

Twenty years into New York City’s recycling program, mixed results

By Benedict Moran

Standing on the street near the Bronx apartment building where he lives one Tuesday night, Alfred Munoz insists that he is eco-friendly, even though he doesn't recycle.

"I am!" Munoz says. "But there's just not an incentive to recycle. You have to go all the way downstairs into some dark corner."

Twenty years after New York City’s recycling program began in 1989, many residents seemingly share the thoughts of Munoz. Despite often expressing a desire to be environmentally friendly, only half of the city’s potential recyclable waste is salvaged. This may have been why a 2008 study by Popular Science magazine ranked New York City's recycling efforts last of 50 American cities listed.

“They’ve hit a ceiling, and they’re just not going beyond that,” says Marjorie Clarke, an assistant professor at City University of New York who wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on recycling in New York City. “They figure, that’s as much as New Yorkers will recycle. End of story! But there is more that can be done.”

Approximately 16 percent of New York City's total waste is recycled, according to a 2004 study by the Department of Sanitation (DOS). Almost 36 percent of total waste is composed of recyclable materials; in other words, New Yorkers recycle about 50 percent of what they could with current levels of participation. This amounts to approximately 5,400 tons per day.

Other cities, like San Fransisco, with a recycle rate of 70 percent, and Los Angeles, at 60 percent, have fared much better.

Some waste disposal experts claim that comparing recycling programs elsewhere to that of New York City -- with its dense, culturally diverse, and demographically mixed neighborhoods -- is misleading.

“Generally, most New Yorkers are very eager to recycle,” said David Hurde, director of the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), a nonprofit advocacy organization that runs recycling awareness campaigns for the Mayor’s office.

"But getting complete participation in high-density, multi-family dwellings is difficult, because there is just so much anonymity," he said. “New York faces a unique challenge in that regard.”

Recycling rates – known as “diversion” rates, for how much potential recyclables are diverted from dumps – differ drastically across the city. In South Bronx, only 13 percent of recyclable waste is recycled, while over 83 percent is in lower Manhattan, according to Department of Sanitation statistics.

Landlords largely explain this discrepancy, said Kathy Dawkins, a communications officer at DOS. Landlords are responsible for providing a recycling area, containers, signage, and preparing the trash for collection.

“We have found that building superintendents, owners, and managers are key to how well an area recycles,” Dawkins explained. “If you have a good super who knows what to do, the numbers go up.”

CUNY’s Clarke says the onus is not only on the city to put more pressure on building managers to make recycling easier, but to encourage residents to make it their own responsibility. Her studies demonstrated that putting a recycling area on each floor is critical to encouraging residents to participate.

Clarke also believes that more money should be put into education. "You're basically competing against the advertising industries, which are spending billions on getting you to buy stuff and throw away stuff," she said.

To be sure, many New Yorkers still don’t know how to recycle and they make many mistakes with they throw out waste, says the CENYC’s Hurde.

"It's amazing how many New Yorkers think a clamshell is a bottle or a jug," he said, referring to how other waste gets mixed up with recyclables. His organization distributes pamphlets, coordinates 'how-to-recycle' games at community events, and even plans alternative methods such as hip hop song contests to promote recycling knowledge.

But it is unclear how effective this campaign has been, as historical data on recycle rates doesn’t exist.

In 2002, faced with the post 9-11 budget crisis, the city halted the recycling of metal, glass, and plastic. Though it was reinstated in 2004, Hurde says many New Yorkers still don’t realize glass and metal can be recycled.

Ron Gonen, the co-founder and CEO of RecycleBank, an organization that runs a national recycling incentive program, thinks the city’s rate could be increased.

"Every time New York City can recycle, [it] saves the city a significant amount of money," he says. Since 2001, when the city’s last landfill on Staten Island was filled to capacity, all trash has been sent out of state, and this costs more than recycling at local processing centers.

"The fact that recycling rates are so low in New York City creates a major financial burden on the city that could be resolved by a greater focus on recycling,” he explained.

The city makes around $14.8 million in recycling revenue, and additional revenue from fines collected from recycling violations.

In the 2009 fiscal year, the DOS issued 129,990 violations for failure to properly put recyclables out for collection with non-recyclables, failure to put recyclables out for collection, or placing non-recyclables in a recycling container. In 2008, the most recent year available, $3,338,556.78 in fines were collected from all recycling violations.

Jason M., 30, a long-time resident of Crotona Park, an area of the Bronx with the second-lowest diversion rate of the city, says very few people recycle on the street where he grew up.

"From this corner here, to this corner here, nobody recycles" he said, standing on Vyse Street and pointing to the opposite corners of 173rd and 174th Streets. "Why? Because the managers don't give enough information for people to do it."

But six years ago, he moved into a green building, with solar panels and gardens just two blocks from where he stood, and says he recycles every day.

“They told us we have to,” he said. “And they have pamphlets at the door to remind you.”

The Haraz Mountains

Last weekend I visited a village on the lower hills of the Haraz mountains, 3 hours from the capital, Sana'a. It is one of the few tourist destinations in the country that is currently open to foreigners, and has the benefit of being accessible by road, though only through tortuous highways and occasional roadblocks manned by armed Yemeni soldiers. Unlike in 2003, tourists are now restricted to areas considered thoroughly safe by the police, as the government is trying to recover from the fallout and negative publicity it received after 9 foreigners were kidnapped last month in the Northern region of Sa'ada. Yemen doesn’t have much going for it these days: a rebellion in the North, a simmering secessionist movement in the South (See here on the recent and possibly related pipeline bombing in Shabwa province), al-Qaeda insurgents in the East, and most recently, the Yemenia Airways plane crash off of Comoros.

Anecdotally, most of the foreigners I know here in Sana’a, with the exception of dark-skinned non-Western men, have not been able acquire the necessary permits to leave Sana’a in recent weeks. In 2003, I was able to travel solo to the Hadramaut Mountains of Eastern Yemen, Aden in the South, Hudaydah on the Red Sea, and even Marib, the former capital of the Sabean Kingdom. Alas, I may be stuck in Sana’a for the remainder of my time here.

Below, where I slept for the night.

Rasas’s father’s is a sickly nonagenarian who spends his days reclined on a mafraj, or traditional couch, in the common room as his family tends to him. His memory is more healthy than his body, though, and when we arrived he told me in simple Arabic of life under the Ottoman occupation ("they were very bad, the Turks..."), when over 500 armed and mounted Turkish soldiers were stationed in what was back then a thinly populated coffee-producing region. He had fonder memories of Imam Yahia, the theocratic ruler who controlled much of Northern Yemen until the revolution in 1962.

Though it now only takes three hours to reach his home by car, until not long ago it required a dangerous five-day donkey ride across the Haraz mountains, to where Yahia used to rule in Sana’a. "Things are much easier now," he said.


On the way we had purchased 6 large bushels of qat, the local leaf that is chewed as a narcotic. The leaf itself isn’t swallowed, but chewed and stored in the cheek until it bulges out like a professional trumpet player’s stretched jowls. It’s an amazing experience, sitting for hours upon end, chewing a ball of green mushy leaves, smoking, drinking chilled water, and conversing on subjects serious and not in a muggy, crowded room full of men. On this occasion, they conversed on a variety of subjects that are at the crux of how Yemeni society is changing. How should they understand the kidnappings in the North, and the slaying of a Jewish man by a conservative Muslim that led to the exodus of the remainder of the Sa'ada Jews? Is Islam growing in developed countries, and if not, is that a concern? At school, should their children's educations focus on the Hadiths and the Qoran, or are more modern subjects like math and English more important? The discussion concluded, from what I understood, with a note that Islam should be peaceful and welcoming of other faiths, that the Houthi fundamentalists in the North were crazy, and that their children should learn modern subjects as well as the traditional Islamic canon.

Below, the qat session.


A significant Jewish population used to reside in the area, but all left during Operation Magic Carpet, the massive enterprise that brought most of Yemen's 50,000 Jews to Israel in 1949-1950. Now, less than 200 Jews live in Yemen, near Sana'a. And they are leaving, slowly. Below, the old Jewish Quarter of al-Hajjarah.