The urgent cleaning of the Paraná River is necessary. This was determined by the Federal Justice, with a resolution from the Rosario judge Sylvia Aramberri. She ordered the construction of a wastewater treatment plant to treat the sewage that has been flowing in the south of the city for decades.
This is happening practically without controls and the river pollution is advancing. The judge in charge of court No. 2 granted the protection requested by the Cuenca Río Paraná Civil Association against the company Aguas Santafesinas S.A, the Regulatory Entity of Sanitary Services of the Province of Santa Fe, the Province, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.
Cleaning of the Paraná River: the decisive ruling
The judge ordered the province and Aguas Santafesinas company to “carry out the necessary works to provide proper and adequate treatment for sewage“.
This task is currently carried out by the concessionaire -Aguas Santafesinas SA-, but it also applies to any future concessionaire.
It also imposes on all of them the duty to submit biannual reports “regarding the administrative procedures carried out and the works done in this regard, for their knowledge and oversight”.
Furthermore, Assa is ordered that until the works are completed and the plant is operational, they must strictly comply with the quality control of the effluent discharged by septic tank trucks that go to the reception center at Ayolas and Circunvalación.
The company must provide the Court with a “detailed report” on these quality controls every three months.
In addition, Enress will have “the task of verifying that Aguas Santafesinas strictly complies with the measures established”. It must also submit a report on these controls every three months.
“A groundbreaking ruling”
“It is a groundbreaking ruling because it is a conflict that has been dragging on for decades without a solution and the most valuable aspect is that it orders the construction of the treatment plant,” said Fabian Maggi, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, to Rosario/12.
However, the lawyer criticized the fact that “there is a lack of determination of interim goals and deadlines, so that this does not drag on for several more decades”.
For this reason, he announced that they will seek to file an appeal demanding a strict compliance schedule that is “more stringent than the judge’s general declaration”.
In that regard, Maggi acknowledged as “extremely remarkable from an environmental perspective” that the judge “echoes the words of the experts in the expert opinion stating that this discharge has caused irreversible damage to the Paraná River”.
Likewise, the lawyer for the civil association elaborated: “like any ruling related to these issues, it opens up a range of possibilities and questions for the future, because this case only defines the issue of the Southern Outfall”.
As he indicated, it is still necessary to determine what happens, for example, with the discharge into the Paraná River at Vera Mujica Street in the Puerto Norte area. In this area, according to his account, there are often problems such as fish mortality.
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