by Rod Hughes

If you are one of the 60,000 people living in Tibas and Moravia, you may have noticed that your drinking water tastes like s–t. That is because it may be.

The morning La Nacion newspaper brought to those residents the happy news that the Water and Sewer Institute (A Y A for its Spanish acronym) has discovered that 2,000 cows live in a dairy up the Rio Macho, upriver from where these two towns draw their water. And every day, the workers dump the excrament in the river…

The dairy, owned by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Ibrahim el Ghanam and located in Cascajal de Coronado, was ordered to cease operations three years ago. But each time, the dairy tore down the Ministry of Health seals and continued operations without missing a beat, the newspaper said. Needless to say, the Enviroment Ministry people were greatly upset by this and now criminal action is being prepared against the dairy’s owner.

Although AyA’s potable water laboratory gave some startling coliform bacteria figures from the river itself, the same agancy’s Metropolitan Potable Water Treatment department chief, Dora Acuna, had some soothing words to say about the water treatment plant at Los Sitios, Moravia, making certain that Tibas and Moravia residents are not drinking a germ soup. Residents may be less than comforted.

As recently as last August, the newspaper reports, el Ghanam was served with yet again another stop order, but filed a demurrer that has still not been resolved. The newspaper’s reporters did a bit of calculation: 1965 cows, producing 25 to 40 kilos of excrament per day equals some 49,000 to 78,000 kilos per day. In pounds, that is 2.2 bls. per kilo which is…a heckuva lot of s–t.