Tonight there continues to be great concern about the turbid state
of the Macal and now the Belize Rivers. For close to a month, the water in the
Macal has been reddish-brown because of accumulated sediment BECOL is releasing
upstream at the Challilo Dam. And despite those concerns from San Ignacio residents
and environmental activists – the news from the authorities tonight is
that the water is safe. The Department of Environment, the Public Health Department
and Belize Waste Control called a joint press conference this afternoon to announce
that apart from its appearance – the water is fine. Senior public health
inspector John Bodden they are however advising persons not to use the water
if it is untreated.
John Bodden, Sr. Public Health Inspector
“We are advising people not to drink untreated water from the river.
We are in that stage where especially for any sort of heavy metals, we don’t
know what exists in there and we are awaiting that result and when we get that 
information then we could determine what is the advisory we would have to issue.
We advise people that any water you use, to treat it before use for any purpose,
for consumption or domestic wise and we advise people not to swim in the river.”
Haydon Brown, Public Relations Manager – BWS
“Our water is as indicated through our press release, we know that
it is safe for human consumption and that is the treated water and that customers
should continue to have no fair in terms of using the water.”
John Bodden,
“In the media it was actually stated that we are seeing an increase
of illnesses, specifically gastroenteritis and skin rashes. We have conducted
a health review and we have done this for the past four weeks which coincides
with the event and what we have seen is that the number of cases that are current
is a negligible increase beyond what we would normally see. In the endemic channel,
if we would look at the endemic channel for the San Ignacio area, it does not
indicate that there is an outbreak or any large increases. What we know is that
we do not have an outbreak or the water that is being used for consumption is
creating any kind of illnesses.”
The experts say that the turbid water, if it is contaminated, would
pose a small health hazard to the fish. And despite their confidence that the
water is safe – they won’t be entirely sure until two weeks time
which is when they’ll get back the results from water samples sent to
a lab in Louisiana to check for the levels of mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic.
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