Environmental ministry study gives Cuenca rivers and drinking water the highest marks for quality

Cuenca not only has the best drinking water in Ecuador, it also has the cleanest rivers.

Cuenca’s Yanuncay River

A report on water quality by government biologists and hydrologists, credits the the sewage pollution plant in Ucubamba with drastically improving river quality levels. Until the plant went on-line 14 years ago, much of the city’s sewage was piped directly into the Yanuncay, Tomebamba, Tarqui and Machángara Rivers.

The report, compiled the Environmental Ministry, says that the practice continues in much of Ecuador due to a lack of adequate sewage treatment facilities.

The 45-hectare Ucubamba facility, just off the Azoguez autopista, has six holding ponds that receive and treat city sewage before it is returned to the river basin. The ponds receive more than 85% of sewage of the Cuenca canton and the amount continues to rise.

Biologist Hari González, who coordinated the study for the Ecuador’s environmental ministry says that river water quality is monitored at 30 downstream stations and that the results show the water is the highest quality of any urban area of Ecuador. The water is clear and sediment rate is less than 100 milligrams of total dissolved solids per liter of water, he says.

A major challenge for the plant, according to González, is removing sludge collected in the ponds and a new program is collecting the sludge and transporting it to a specially designed facility at the municipal landfill in Pichacay.

González acknowledges that pollution still enters Cuenca’s rivers but says tests show impressive water quality improvement over the years. “In populated areas it is impossible to keep rivers pristine,” he says. “There will always be cases of illegal dumping, animal and human waste and contamination from run-off as are result of rainfall, but the water quality is much, much higher today than it was 20 years ago and even 10 years ago. The testing we do every two years has shown improving quality with every test and for a populated region we are in the top 2% of the highest quality levels found anywhere in Latin America.”

Cuenca’s drinking water quality has been rated the best in Ecuador for 18 consecutive years, according to the environmental ministry. According to González, the municipal water quality rates in the top 5% of all municipal water systems in the world. “An international organization of water system engineers has been conducting analyses every five years since 1998, and since 2004, Cuenca has had best drinking water in Latin America,” he said.