The Auditor General of Salta found several irregularities in the treatment of household waste in the municipality of La Candelaria. In fact, the agency said that the city conducts a "negative management" of solid waste. It should be noted that this type of management "is associated with serious risks" because of garbage exposure in residential areas.

According to the report, the City was performing a landfill with household waste, but it was doing it "without having done a study on the Environmental and Social Impact." This landfill is located on municipal land, in "The Aguadita", 4.5 km from the village of La Candelaria.

In this municipal landfill no procedure was implemented to optimize the management of air quality and inventory emitters of air pollutants. In fact, the auditors found "burning and incineration of garbage" in the trenches of the landfill.

"Nor were mechanisms for the proper management of waste implemented, such as: recycling different treatments for different materials, source reduction, and/or reusing materials," the audit explained.

The Candelaria not only has a lot of irregularities, but "did not provide any documentation showing the plans for reclamation once the landfill was complete." In fact, in the budget for the year 2009 there were no allocations for such purposes.

Pollution and disease

The risks discussed in the report are diseases that may occur "by direct contact with waste and indirectly, through transmitters such as flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats, dogs, and cats that eat trash." We're talking about the transmission of diseases such as "virosic hepatitis, toxoplasmosis, typhoid fever, polio, bronchospasm, skin diseases, and intestinal problems."

The Audit of Salta explained that "burning waste is something the collectors tend to do; especially those people who live in the vicinity of the municipal landfill, this can cause the workers serious injury to their respiratory system." To this we must add the emanation of offensive and dangerous gases that are highly flammable.

But that's not all. The report published in 2012 also indicates that water pollution deteriorates and makes the groundwater leak leachates. "These fluids infect soil, altering their structure for long periods of time", the audits explain.

There is still more?

Of course. The Candelaria "does not have a system that allows all environmental data to collected, maintained, and updated, so as to serve as a specific source of information," the auditors said.

So what does the Audit recommend?

The Audit of Salta defined as a "priority action" the need to stop the actions that are creating environmental damage immediately. Against this, the contribution of the body was, "They must manage a comprehensive solution to the appropriate parties. They should raise and pursue alternative solutions that allow immediate solutions, until the final solution materializes, minimize environmental damage, such as sanitation landfill, digging trenches, etc".