After nearly four years of work, and a few months after its completion, the Waste Management Program in Tourist Towns present "significant underspending", both of which had planned objectives, and funds available. According to a report by the Audit General Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), "63% of its life plan has already gone by" but only 17.2% of its budget has been used, and although in 2010 the promoters of the initiative wanted to build 10 landfills eventually they did not build even one.

The watchdog discussed details of the Program for Comprehensive Solid Waste Management in Tourist Municipalities and, occasionally, the performance of the Executive Unit of International Loans (UEPI, for its acronym in Spanish) under the aegis of the Ministry of Tourism. This initiative, which had a budget of $49 million, was funded largely by a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB U.S. $39 million), and the rest were local contributions.

Three questions, what is the "Integrated Management of Residential Waste"? It is the set of actions that make up the process of waste management in order to protect the environment and quality of life. These activities include the steps of generating, initial provision, collection, transfer, transportation, treatment, and final disposal.

What is the plan? This initiative began in 2008, a tourist town proposes a project, the program is funded and once completed a construction -for example- it is transferred to that municipality for administration. You can finance feasibility studies, construction of landfills, closure of open dumps, and community awareness campaigns.

Lastly, what is a tourist town? It is adjoining to a National Park or protected area. In Argentina there are 77 of these municipalities and, according to Law 25,916 (2004), to rule on the treatment of waste, that is where you should dispose the waste generated in the resorts.

In preparing its report, adopted this year, the AGN could not access a "list of eligible municipalities, with definitions and categorizations of the criterion of ‘tourist.’ "The lack of specifications was evident to discover that the Program "initiated projects in 19 municipalities, five of which were not adjacent to National Parks: Chili, Perito Moreno, Los Antiguos, Puerto Deseado and Tigre", were listed by the technicians.

More on this point, the audit noted that the Program’s Operational Manual "exceeded the mandate given by the loan contract term." In that manual financing is given to projects in "tourist towns adjacent to National Parks". According to the watchdog, this was "wrongly assigned, but not necessarily a significant misallocation of resources."

Also, the research states that "the program is not sufficiently known among eligible municipalities”. Auditors looked at 21 potential construction targets and, of these, "eight were completely unaware of it." However, "even in those areas with projects underway, there was confusion with other waste management programs", completed the AGN.

Good Neighbors

In the "conceptual project document" The IDB had stressed the need for inter-institutional coordination between different levels of government, because this way the negotiations will be completed quickly, for example, where the landfill would be located.

In this regard, the Audit notes that "the executing unit (the Ministry of Tourism) has not had an active role for facilitating agreements between neighboring municipalities and their management of their waste."

Why is this type of mediation needed? Researchers interviewed 29 municipal officials, of which "24 expressed the difficulty in reaching joint solutions with other local governments on waste management, and this was due to disagreement on the goals of each administration or mismatch in the type of technical option to follow."

According to the federal watchdog, the "absence" of the area responsible for promoting the program also had to do with "different institutional frames" of Tourism in recent times. In 2008 the area changed from being under the aegis of the Secretariat Office of the President to merging with the Ministry of Production, and in 2010 became a full-fledged program.

All these observations influenced, as determined by the Audit, in the low implementation of the Waste Management in Tourist Towns. As for the financial underspending, it resulted in the obligation to "pay excess commissions loans of $126,216.90 million dollars."

Misiones

Last week, The Auditor.info had spread the observations of the AGN on the implementation of the Waste Management Program in Misiones in the town of Puerto Iguazú. But that was not the only town that caught the attention of the federal watchdog.

Right next to the City of Cataratas is the town of Andresito with its Yacuy Provincial Park that was designed to protect a stream. There, the auditors noted that an open landfill had been closed "without having signed the corresponding agreement between the Municipality and the Ministry of Tourism" and without "raising awareness or without institutional strengthening, despite being a requirement of the program." This construction had a cost of $243,710.

The AGN visited the landfill and noted a "lack of signals" that prohibits entry to the landfill as well as prohibits people from depositing their garbage in that location. Access is "hampered by the growth of vegetation," with weeds five feet tall that don’t allow property boundaries to be distinguished.

Furthermore, "new sources of waste, of different types, for example, paint, leftover meat from slaughter houses, and traces of burning tires made by the municipality to combat dengue" were found.

In that lot it was planned to install two groundwater wells for periodic quality control, but the auditors were unable to identify any, and added that "no pesticide spraying takes place."

According to the audit, "this situation meant that actions for “reconstruction” (of Andresito) had to be taken due to a new landfill on the property which had already been sanitized.

However, despite the actions that were carried out and the used funds, the AGN found that "the waste management in the municipality is taken care of by taking the collected waste to landfills in the town of Caraguatay, located 157 kilometers of Andresito".