A report from the General Audit of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) indicates that several Buenos Aires dependencies register "weaknesses" in their task of sanitizing one of the most contaminated watercourses in the country, the Matanza Riachuelo Basin.

Although in the City of Buenos Aires the Environmental Emergency Law (2057) has been in force since August 2006 last year the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the Federal Government, the Province of Buenos Aires and the City to act together on the Riachuelo, the Buenos Aires’ Watchdog affirms that there were "difficulties to move from the planning stage to a continuous and permanent execution" of the actions of environmental recomposition.

Specifically, the AGCBA relayed the work of the Ministries of Health and Urban Development, the Housing Institute (IVC) and the Environmental Protection Agency in the period 2007-September 2008.

Regarding the health portfolio, the report argues that "weaknesses in the health plan" are related to the "lack of continuity of the necessary human resources", and the lack of administrative actions (resolutions), which drive actions such as the Guide of Environmental Health Survey, or the implementation of the Pediatric Road Map. In addition, there is no continuous and homogenous burden on the Ministry's database.

The works that correspond to the Ministry of Urban Development "present a high level of delay in its execution," says the Audit and explains that, in part, much had to do with the crisis of 2001, which interrupted the work. There are two projects in which "possible risks" were detected. On the one hand, the previous administration of the Government of Buenos Aires had signed an agreement with the company AySA, in which it committed itself to contribute $ 1 billion for the works of infrastructure of rainwater network. 

However, according to the AGCBA, "for the current management the agreement is not in force (because) it was not approved by the Legislature." Likewise, "in 2008 it was not known that the works had been started and the corresponding disbursement for that year" of $ 40 million was not made. On the other hand, there is the drainage work of the Basin G and Z4, which was in the stage of renegotiation at the time of the report. In principle, this construction was to be financed by a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), but in October last year, the City reported that "they would no longer be made with that financing."

According to a framework agreement signed with the national government, the IVC is responsible for the relocation of the residents of Riachuelo. But, on the City's website, it is also the responsibility of the Southern Corporation, a state-owned company. Nevertheless, the AGCBA adds that "the transfer of the works of Villas and settlements of the IVC to the Corporation was not approved by the Legislature."

Aside from this, at the time of the Audit report, of the 745 houses that were planned to be built for the first stage of the relocation, "only two works corresponding to the construction of 83 houses were contracted, evidencing the low level of advance in this concrete action of maximum necessity."

On the other hand, the water quality controls, carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, "only allow to identify the pollution through sewage discharges", points out the AGCBA and adds that no own data on the impact that the Heavy metals, which AySA controls. Although it is an autarchic body, this Agency does not have financial autonomy, but depends on what it receives from the Ministry of Public Space to fulfill its functions, "which can be a limiting (in) decision making and execution of the tasks in time and form, "says the monitoring body.

The discontinuity in the execution of the works "can jeopardize the effective fulfillment of the different axes of action", reasons the Audit, and it gives as example the works of the Master Plan of Protection against Floods, that has been in force since 1998, "that Evidence a noticeable delay."

However, "the fact is that there is an affected population in a defined geographical area, multiple problems with different levels of incidence on each other and a very large gap between being and the duty to be reality, that several actors involved together should transform, "concludes the agency.