ENVIRONMENT-COLOMBIA:
The Troubled Waters of the Magdalena River

María Isabel García*


BOGOTA, (Tierramérica) - The bed of the Magdalena River, the main waterway and a national symbol of Colombia, this year will see oil drilling for the first time, a new threat to an area already assailed by human activity.

”Now there are more cows than fish, and who knows what will happen with the oil that the press said was found here,” said Rosendo Galvis, with a note of nostalgia. He supplies fish from the Magdalena to restaurants in central Bogotá.

But it is not just fish in the river that are on decline. Deforestation, erosion, contamination and the disappearing wetlands around it affect a quarter of the population in this country of 40 million people.

Oil drilling is slated to begin in October.

Along the 1,540-km course of the Magdalena there are 73 municipalities, and more than 700 populations in the jurisdiction of 18 departments.

In its journey from the Andes Mountains to the Caribbean Sea, the river receives some 200 tonnes of domestic waste each day, according to the potable water and sanitation department of the Colombian Ministry of Environment.

Experts also report that rainfall patterns have been altered as a result of the deforestation and the lack of territorial planning.

”Nearly all of the towns are located in flood plains,” Eduardo Samudio, of the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, told Tierramérica.

The river dwellers are accustomed to flooding, which normally occurs in November and December, and from May to July. But it brings environmental problems and health problems, such as the proliferation of disease-spreading vectors, said Samudio.

The watershed of the Magdalena and its main tributary, the Cauca, covers 257,400 square km, 26 percent of which is within Colombian territory. Another 30 significant rivers, with numerous tributaries, flow into the Magdalena.

In two decades, human settlement of the area led to the destruction of 3.5 million hectares of forest. Recent inventories indicate that a similar total area of forest remains intact.

Subsistence cattle raising is blamed for the conversion of thousands of hectares into pasture, affecting the stability of the soil and altering the dynamic of the river.

With an erosion rate of 330 tonnes of soil per hectare per year, according to the National Planning Department, and a high sediment load, the navigability of the river is also suffering.

The larger particles carried by the waters from the Andean glacier run-off are a significant component of the sedimentation process, say studies by the regional Magdalena environmental authority.

That is why there is concern about the oil exploitation that is set to begin in October in the Middle Magdalena, in the departments of Boyacá and Antioquia.

The oil field known by its English name Under River will be run by Omimex of Colombia, an affiliate of the Omimex Resources, based in the U.S. state of Texas, and by the governmental Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos.

With proven reserves of 22 million barrels and an estimated potential of 45 million, investment in the operation is calculated to require 25 to 28 million dollars.

But, more than the environmental dangers involved in oil extraction, the main threat to the river is reduced flow and the effects of global warming, environmental activist Gonzalo Palomino, of the University of Tolima, told Tierramérica.

”One can survive without a car, but not without a river,” said Palomino.

The resources earmarked for oil drilling are the equivalent of the annual budget of state investment in the Yuma Project, the effort to recover the Magdalena's navigability for passenger and cargo traffic. Yuma is the indigenous name for the Magdalena.

The goal of the Yuma Project is to increase passenger traffic from 600,000 to 900,000 a year, and cargo shipments from two million tonnes to four or five million tonnes annually by 2006.

Since the Spanish Conquest, the river and its geographical axis marked the route of penetration by the Spaniards from the ports of Santa Marta and Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, to the interior of what is Colombian territory today.

In colonial times, the Magdalena was the natural connection between the metropoli and the distant territories and with Santa Fe de Bogotá, capital of what was then the Viceroyalty of New Granada.

Some historians and sociologists believe that the Magdalena River is what led to the atypical demographic development of Colombia.

Despite its coasts on the Atlantic and the Pacific, political and administrative power was concentrated in Bogotá, 2,600 metres above sea level, reached by land from the Magdalena river ports of Honda and Girardot.

(* María Isabel García is an IPS contributor. Originally published Jan. 31 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)