Cleaning Up the Lake and the Surrounding Area
Officials from the Oruro mayor’s office anticipate that they need 500 people to help as well as cargo trucks and at least one digger to pick up trash strewn over just 24 acres near the lake, according to EFE, which is just a fraction of the nearly 600 acres that are contaminated. There’s so much trash, though, that officials estimate that this small action would only address what piled up over the last eight to 10 months. It doesn’t even include the trash inside the lake.
If officials carry out the cleanup, it would be a good start, but it’s clearly insufficient. Unsaid in any of these plans so far is how the city or national governments could improve collection so that so much trash doesn’t end up strewn about the landscape in the first place. Drastic action and cooperation are needed to clean up Lake Uru Uru, which is critical to the animals that live there and the people that depend on it.
