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Mounted on her small wooden raft, Karla Orellana, a 37-year-old fisherwoman, looks up and points her index finger toward the center of the reservoir with a surprised face.
She has just witnessed the sighting of an unusual specimen in these waters.
“There he is floating, close to the island.
We just saw her, right?” she says, looking around for her 13-year-old daughter Meilin.
The girl nods, sitting in the same raft, while she moves the oar in the water looking for something to catch.
Cerrón Grande Reservoir. Víctor Peña
If these were other waters, the sighting would probably have been of a whale, a dolphin, or, with less luck, a crocodile.
But what Karla and her daughter saw floating in the water this morning was a refrigerator.
Karla and Meilin fish in the waters of the El Cerrón Grande reservoir, in northern El Salvador.
For a year now, this reservoir has been the epicenter of sightings like this.
“Here you can see blenders, washing machines, pieces of cars.
Sometimes toilet pieces come through too,” says Meilin, as she pulls a plastic bottle out of the water and tosses it into the raft.
Around them the water is completely covered with nymphs (water lilies) and a tapestry of bottles, shoes and plastic waste floating on the surface.
With an extension of 13,000 hectares, the El Cerrón Grande reservoir is the largest body of water in El Salvador and since 2005 it has been considered a Ramsar site by UNESCO, meaning that due to its ecological importance it should be under State protection.
However, for more than a decade it has become a giant sewer where tons of waste that travels through rivers from the capital, San Salvador, end up.
“All the shit from San Salvador ends up here,” says Jacinto Tobar, the mayor of Potonico, one of the 12 municipalities that surround the reservoir, where Karla and her daughter also live.
Karla Orellana collects plastic with her 13-year-old daughter, Meilyn Ordóñez.
Victor Pena
When he says shit, Tobar isn't just referring to household appliances or the tons of plastic that travels down the rivers from the capital and other cities.
It means real shit.
A report from the Central American University (UCA) indicates that in 2010 8.5 million pounds (38.5 million kilos) of feces entered this body of water per month.
And the situation has only been getting worse.
So much so that in the dry season, when the earth at the bottom of the artificial lake is uncovered, the locals walk on a dark layer that is not earth.
"It's shit," Tobar emphasizes.
Karla and Meilin have been fishermen since they were little, a trade inherited for generations in this place.
Karla learned it from her father, just as her daughter now learns it from her.
By 2010, it was estimated that there were more than 27,000 fishermen around the reservoir, but due to increased pollution, the number was decreasing.
Now, in Potonico, there are no more than 60 families that are dedicated to fishing.
However, to this day you can still find some species to fish.
Although it is no longer a profitable business in the reservoir, because nobody wants to eat anything that comes out of this place.
“Here nobody wants to buy the fish from us because it has lead and is contaminated with who knows what”, acknowledges the mayor.
According to official information, in El Salvador 4,226 tons of garbage are generated per day, of which 60% are plastic and organic waste.
It is estimated that of this total, 80% ends up in landfills while the other 20% is not treated, that is, it ends up in rivers, lakes and beaches.
A good part of that goes to the reservoir where Karla and her daughter go fishing every day.
Garbage accumulation in the Cerrón Grande reservoir. Víctor Peña
The El Cerrón Grande reservoir is fed, among others, by the Acelhuate river, the most polluted in El Salvador.
That river alone, which crosses a good part of the capital, receives the tributary of 32 sewer networks, seven sugar mills, 18 metal industries, 25 textile factories, seven paint factories, and seven paper factories, to name a few industries.
“Here there are mojarras, tilapia, sardines... but people don't like the fish from here because it tastes like earth,” says Karla, listing the species she used to catch.
It used to, in the past tense, because now it fishes for something different.
“I used to fish for fish and now I fish for bottles,” she says.
Like Karla and her daughter, about ten more families from Potonico still go fishing in the reservoir.
But they no longer catch fish.
“It's a business too,” says the fisherwoman.
Women don't fish for just any plastic.
"Only the light", they say.
Colored bottles, discarded shoes, appliance parts, and anything else they can find in their path stays in the reservoir.
Until a few years ago, when Karla was still fishing, on a good day she could catch about 15 of them and sell them cheap, for a dollar each, and get something to eat.
She now misses fishing as her father taught her.
Her days are longer and more tiring.
On a day like today, she collects 40 bags of garbage that she will sell for 0.50 cents each to a recycling company.
The accumulation of plastic in the Cerrón Grande reservoir, in Chalatenago, is generating a health crisis in the municipality of Potonico.Víctor Peña
Although this artificial lake has been contaminated for many years, in mid-2021 the situation suddenly took a turn for the worse.
The high degree of contamination caused a nymph to be born in the reservoir, which the locals call “Lettuce”.
These water lilies expanded relentlessly and covered almost the entire surface of the reservoir.
As if trying to protect its waters from other invaders, the nymph created a plug in the mouth of the Lempa River, one of the three and the largest that feeds the artificial lake.
Although her network didn't stop the dissolved contamination, the largest objects remained there, from bottles to all appliances, car parts and even dead animals that traveled from the city.
This meant a double problem: on the one hand, it clogged the fishermen's boats and threatened to damage the turbines of the hydroelectric dam that works in the place.
So state employees sprayed down a chemical that almost completely killed the nymph.
And with her her natural stopper.
“And hundreds of tons of garbage began to enter.
They were rivers of plastic, of shit, of everything you can imagine, ”says the mayor as he takes a plastic bottle out of the water and throws it into the boat with a helpless gesture.
By August 2022, the surface of the reservoir was so polluted that fishermen couldn't get out because their boats got stuck in the trash.
In an act of desperation, the mayor posted a cry for help on social media showing photos and videos showing the surface of the lake covered in bottles.
The complaint went viral and, after the news spread in various media, the central government reacted.
Most of the garbage and plastic that accumulates in the reservoir comes from San Salvador. Víctor Peña
For two months, the government of President Nayib Bukele sent 50 workers to clean the lake.
He also mounted a campaign in the media exposing the work and inviting the population not to litter.
Such was the media impact of the issue that soon the Legislative Assembly —controlled by the ruling party— amended the law announcing penalties of up to three years in prison for throwing garbage in improper places.
A law that had a lot of publicity in the official media but until today its effect has not been seen.
“They hired 50 people for two months and we at the mayor's office hired 15 more.
We remove 1,500 tons of plastic.
But after two months they stopped coming,” says the mayor.
As he explains, the cleaning of the lake was not real, although most of the floating garbage was removed.
Now the garbage and the nymph have invaded the place again.
On the other side of the reservoir, on a small mountain, there is another mountain of black plastic bags.
“All this has been left here for months.
This is not useful for recycling, so they have left it here”, he says.
At the foot of the hill, in the distance, you can see an old yellow fridge that has run aground.
“We make an effort but it is impossible.
What we are trying to clean up is not produced by a people, it is produced by a country.
Cleaning this sewer does not depend only on us, it depends on those in the city who throw everything here at us”, says the mayor.
“And what we see here is just what is on top.
We don't know how much is at the bottom, ”he adds, resigned.
Meilyn Ordóñez collects a plastic box.
Victor Pena
But the contamination has not only affected fishing.
According to the mayor, although the city has drinking water, the population presents constant symptoms of diarrhea and skin diseases.
Germán Orellana, another 43-year-old fisherman, born in Potonico fishes with a harpoon and for this he goes into the water.
He has recently noticed some spots on his skin and he assures that it is due to water contamination.
Among the things that the inhabitants of Potonico have seen in the reservoir are bags with syringes, bottles of poison and car batteries that drag who knows what.
"Once I got stuck in my foot," says Orellana.
Inhabitants of other municipalities such as El Paraíso report an increase in cases of kidney failure, something they also attribute to the contamination of the reservoir.
It's almost 2:00 in the afternoon and Karla and Meilin are about to finish their day.
For five months they have gotten up every day at 4:00 in the morning to get ready, make their breakfast and get on their raft and start fishing for bottles.
Today they are leaving.
Tomorrow they will get up again at 4:00 am to get back on their raft "Yulissa" and fish for bottles again.
Now they will settle for taking the rubbish and waiting until they can sell it.
“This is not over anyway.
The more time passes, the more garbage comes”, says the mother.
And she leaves a trail between the nymph and the plastic.