Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Protecting Water In Colombia

I came across a great article I want to share with all of you. The topic on WaterKeeper website already grabbed my attention:

Won’t Back Down: Colombia’s Coal-War Warrior


But it was the first paragraph that got me excited to read more about who this Warrior is and what she is doing.

"There is an old saying that dynamite comes in small packages. At just a smidgen over five feet, Bocas de Ceniza Waterkeeper Liliana Guerrero is pure Colombian dynamite. From her small office on a busy street in Barranquilla on Colombia’s north coast, Guerrero is leading a determined charge to stop the destruction that multinational coal companies are wreaking on her country, and she is doing it in spite of considerable personal risk."

Trials and tribulations:

"When Guerrero started her organization, the main problem she thought she would be dealing with was Barranquilla’s untreated domestic and industrial sewage, which were polluting the Magdalena River and devastating the legendary coastal mangrove stands in the Mallorquín marshes north of the city.

“I did not think the coal industry would be the greatest threat to Barranquilla and our precious wetlands, mangroves, river and sea,” she says. “But as the industry expanded, I came to understand the magnitude of the devastation of open-pit mining in the departments of César and La Guajira, as well as from the transportation of mined coal across the department of Magdalena and the catastrophic spills into the ocean at the coal-export ports.”"


This is a great story about a water activist—her struggles and her work. Thank you for all the work you do, Liliana!

Read the full article here: http://waterkeeper.org/magazine-article/wont-back-down-colombias-coal-war-warrior/

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