The Yayabo River in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba is Dying
From drought and garbage
The power outages complicate the pumping of water, so that the population has been without tap water for several weeks.
HAVANA TIMES – The Yayabo River, is barely flowing through Sancti Spíritus. Weeks of drought, plus current temperatures near 95 degrees have reduced it to a simple gully. The weeds and garbage have also slowed its course, the tropical summer steam makes it impassable and, given the color of the water -a sickly yellow- no one who wants to stay healthy would dare to bathe there or take their animals.
Whether you’re viewing the Yayabo from the pedestrian bridge or from the outskirts of the city, the impression is the same. Its lack of vigor and the poor quality of its waters are also affecting the municipal water supply in this town that, since colonial times, has owed its life to the river and its uses.
Now a thick layer of malangueta, an invasive and ecologically destructive species, covers the riverbed. Malangueta proliferates in polluted areas and in waters where garbage and waste of all kinds are frequently dumped. In a country where little attention is paid to garbage dumps, it’s unlikely that the anyone in the vicinity of the Yayabo river has the equipment to rid it of the insistent plague. To clean the waters would require a powerful bulldozer to uproot the heavy stalks.
It has been several weeks since water flowed through the Sancti Spíritus pipes. The problem is common throughout the national territory and has to do not only with the drought but also with power outages. The lack of electricity prevents the pumping of water from its various sources – among them the river – and plunges entire neighborhoods into despair, for not having this most basic of resources, or alternatives to get it.
The Yayabo feeds the aqueduct that sends water to the southern part of the city. Those in the northern zone of the municipality have less difficulty getting water, since theirs comes from the Tuinucu River – not at its best either – while their neighbors depend on the harder-hit Yayabo.
Power outages and falling water levels prevent the people of Sancti Spiritus from adequately filling their water tanks, and the authorities have warned that technical problems have forced them to reduce pumping cycles in certain areas of the province, particularly in the main municipality and the town of Cabaiguan.
Taking advantage of their proximity to the city’s main water station, some neighbors get up early, and at 7 am, if there’s electricity, they can get a little water for their containers. This great privilege depends on whether or not you live near the feeder pipes.
Many of those in Sancti Spiritus fear that the Yayabo will go the same way as the Zaza dam, the largest in the country. The Zaza has not only been affected by the drought, but also by uncontrolled fishing, invasive species and the agricultural overexploitation in some zones, that suck up the water and destroy the equilibrium of the reservoir.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.