In a treatment plant for domestic waste in the Misiones town of Puerto Iguazú, operators work without gloves or masks. This was detected by the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), in an analysis of the Integral Plan of Waste Management in Tourist Towns.

The federal watchdog visited the city located in the far north of Misiones and noted that the resort of 762 square meters of covered area, has "broken or clogged" drain grates where liquid waste was generated. In this regard, the president of the Cataratas Cooperative told auditors that when they "do daily cleanings with a pressure washer for the removal of leachates, the drains fail and flooding occurs." The leachates are generated as a result of the degradation of organic matter and as a result of the infiltration of rainwater that passes through the waste.

The data would not be alarming, if not for another finding of the AGN: farm workers do not have boots that protect them from floods.

There's more. The owner of the Cooperative added that the electrical system of the plant is "injured by illegal connections to neighboring houses, so it hinders the normal supply" of energy. Also during his visit, the auditors found that the electrical panel of the complex was "temporarily locked with a screwdriver." The report adds that within the site there is no "plan of evacuation" in case of fire displayed, and there are no fire extinguishers.

"The plant operates with a device that causes a leak of waste not covered by the project, which should be partially solved by operators through a makeshift circuit," says the audit, adding, "The blade device acts on the initial separation process, in fact, it breaks the waste bags and scatters the garbage. "That's why "the plant workers made, by hand, a line that mitigates this dispersion." And this task, with manual separation of baling and recycled materials, is performed by workers in the complex without gloves or any protection.

What the property did have were drums with liquids for daily fumigation spraying. But these vessels had no identification. Finally, the auditors found on the ground no documentary evidence to show the municipal authorization for the resort.

Integrated Waste Management Plan

The AGN discussed details of the Plan of Integrated Waste Management Residential Touristic Municipalities, divided into two sub-programs implemented by the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development initiative.

The data presented in this report, approved this year on findings from 2010 and 2011, corresponds to the portion of the Plan that is carried out by tourism. The applet in question had a budget of 49.8 million dollars, of which 10 million came from local contributions, and the rest is funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (BID, for its acronym in Spanish). The separation plant and transfer of Port Iguazú ran a cost of $5,891,411 dollars.

However, that money was also used for other purposes, such as closing open dumps.

Also in the town of the Iguazú Falls, one of the World Wonders, they proceeded to close the landfill Iguazú Cue. This is the "current" town land fill. The auditors went through the site and observed: "a missing perimetral fence, with only the boundary of the property in the front and a gated access having been covered; a poster on the gate does not report that it is a sanitized landfill, nor prohibits entry to unauthorized persons.” Precisely, AGN technicians found on the day of their visit "people picking up trash and animals sniffing waste. In addition, vehicles entered carrying personal waste bags. " 

The Iguazú Cue Sanitation Cost $475,451

But Iguazú had another land fill described as "old" by the auditors, which was near the May 1st Neighborhood. The report indicates that the planned actions were not carried out because, according to the Ministry of Tourism, it was "sanitized naturally without the intervention of construction work." In fact, the company that was going to carry on the work, AESA, informed that the inspection body ordered to eliminate the work because there were "very few scattered pockets of waste, no insects and rodents were found and there weren’t odors emanating from the decomposing waste."

If $376,134 was intended for this, but no work was done, what happened? AGN states: "The construction jobs that were not made in this landfill were made in others, such as Iguazú Cue”, adding that "there is no documentary evidence of involvement of a competent environmental authority" to justify the lack of sanitation of the "old" landfill.