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Jake Hunter WP2 First Draft May 5th, 2020

Name： Jake Hunter

Got your sunscreen? Bathing suit? Spanish dictionary and the $50 your Mom gave you for a meal at the airport? Then you’re ready to visit one of the most beautiful lakes Central America has to offer. Lake Atitlan is home to around five-hundred thousand locals, three active volcanoes, and a once thriving tourism scene. But what has changed since the early two-thousands that has turned this incredible tourist destination into a region filled with pollution and disease?

Since before tourist bloggers and travel gurus got their hands on it, Lake Atitlan was Guatemala’s unfound gem. With its gorgeous landscape of towering volcanoes and crystal blue water, Atitlan offers a peace and serenity is truly magical.

But with tourists, comes trash. Many of the tourists visiting from America were accustomed to a more… ‘comfortable’ life style. This meant that they brought with them plastic waste in the form of water bottles, cleaning products, food, and single use plastic goods. Due to the economic instability of Guatemala as a country, rural regions such as the town of Panajachel in Atitlan have little in the way of infrastructure for garbage disposal. This means that all of that waste? Goes straight to the bottom of the lake.

(Above) A graph showing the bloom of cyanobacteria in 2009

On top of this, locals already lacked the sewage and waste disposal systems to maintain adequate living standards. With sewage runoff and waste already being pumped into the lake, a dangerous evil began growing on the lake’s floor. In 2009, experts confirmed the presence of cyanobacteria in the lakes water. And years later, the problem has only gotten worse.

Since I was a child, my mother has been taking me back to her home country of Guatemala twice a year. While this is mainly to see her parents and my other relatives, our favorite place to spend Christmas, Birthday’s or New Year’s is Lake Atitlan. There is never a dull moment, whether it be swimming, water skiing, scuba diving, or star gazing, there is always something to do that makes you feel connected to the lake. Perhaps it was this quality that has attached my family to heavily to Lake Atitlan, with even my Grandfather having his ashes spread over the lake in 2012.

It came as a shock to me when I arrived at the Lake in late July of 2015, only to find my watery playground covered in a layer of cyanobacteria. From our dock to towns miles across the lake, a thick layer of bacteria was covering the surface. Naturally, I was apprehensive to dip my toes into the gunk.

As I took a dive, two things struck me; there’s a dead fish in my landing spot, and what I thought was an inch-thick layer of gunk was over ten feet deep. As I cleaned myself off and collected my thoughts, I was deeply saddened by the turn the lake had taken, it was clear that the water was unclean and there didn’t seem to be much being done about it.

I was right, so little is being done to solve the problem that local businesses are rapidly going out of business. Local Pizza and Steak house owner, Hilda Xitamul Yac spoke out saying “Tourists don’t buy fish. They distrust it because they think it’s from the lake.”. This of course led me to ask, why isn’t anything being done?

The answer is more complex than it seems, unfortunately. The bacteria are growing more in recent years due to agriculture in the surrounding areas. With fertilizer tremendously boosting the yields of rural farmers, phosphorus from these fertilizers runs into the lake, exponentially boosting growth of cyanobacteria. And with locals lacking in educational recourses, they are unaware of the impact dumping trash and sewage has on their environment.

Researchers such as Margaret Dix, at the Universidad de Valle de Guatemala confirmed that strains of the bacteria are heavily linked to degenerative brain diseases, and can affect the central nervous system, kidney, and liver of both animals and humans.

It is difficult to restrict farmers usage of fertilizers, as it has finally allowed them to break the financial prison their countries economy has put them in. Thus, we must look to include the population in developing environmental awareness.

Lake Atitlan is one of the most beautiful places in the world. If we stop funding and educating the rural population on how to halt the growth of cyanobacteria, their livelihoods as well as the health of the lake, will die. Luckily, great steps are being made by the Universidad de Valle de Guatemala in accordance with the Government’s efforts to conserve the lake, setting up water treatment plants for locals, and introducing waste management systems. If we all do our part, hopefully my children will fall in love with the lake, just as I did.

(Above) Lake Atitlan with cyanobacteria layers visible.

Works Cited:

Rejmankova, Eliska & Komárek, Jiří & Dix, Margaret & Komárková, Jaroslava & Girón, Nancy. (2011). Cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Limnologica. 41. 296-302. 10.1016/j.limno.2010.12.003.

Universidad de Valle de Guatemala Investigation: https://www.uvg.edu.gt/investigacion/cea/