The Down and Dirty in Puerto Escondido
IT SEEMS THAT IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE GARBAGE dumps and landfills sometimes you are going to have fires, and where there are fires there is smoke. Mostly the fires start underground as a result of what is buried there combining with whatever chemicals are interacting. These dumps, which are landfills, are in the hills, but the smoke travels down wind into Bajos de Chila and the Punta Zicatela.
Each municipio of Puerto has its own garbage dump/landfill. The one of San Pedro Mixtepec, which includes most of Puerto Escondido as well as Chila, is in Los Nanches, on the road connecting Chila to the town of San Pedro Mixtepec. The dump of Santa María Colotepec, which includes the Adoquín, Zicatela and the Punta Zicatela, is near the end of the road to the town of Colotepec.
What is to be done? Well, according to biologist Armando Mendoza Estrada Ochoa, the Director of Ecological Management for San Pedro Mixtepec, it would help if people separated their trash – putting organic waste in one plastic bag, cardboard and paper in another, plastics in another, and glass in another. Although this trash is separated at the garbage dump, there is always the chance for some of these materials to be buried together and cause underground fires. When smoke from these fires is detected, the ground is covered with a layer of wet earth, which is then covered with another 15 or 17 cm’s of dirt.
The Puerto Escondido garbage dump/landfill closed in
2017. It is now the site of the Lemon Park tennis court on Highway 131.
Photos: Barbara Joan Schaffer
