River of blood in Argentina? Stream near Buenos Aires turns red

A stream in a suburb of Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, turned bright red this week, prompting residents to express concern that industrial chemicals could be to blame.

Residents of Sarandí, about 6 miles south of the capital, told local news outlets that chemicals from several factories and tanneries in the area could have changed the color of the stream, which flows into the Río de la Plata, a major body of water between Argentina and Uruguay.

Rivers in the area have a history of contamination problems. The Matanza-Riachuelo River basin, for example, has been called one of the most polluted waterways in Latin America.

Officials have announced major public works projects to prevent sewage and industrial discharges from entering the basin.

The environmental ministry for the province of Buenos Aires said in a statement that it responded Thursday morning to a report that the stream in Sarandí was red and that it had taken water samples for testing.

It said that the freakish hue could have been the result of “some type of organic dye.” A ministry spokesperson said Friday that results of the testing were not yet available.

Maria Ducomls, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, told Agence France-Presse that she noticed the stream had turned red after a strong smell woke her up. Argentine newspaper La Nación described it as a “nauseating smell, like garbage.”

“It looked like a river covered in blood,” Ducomls said.

She said that the stream had turned other strange colors over the years — bluish, greenish, purplish, pink — and that it sometimes had an oily sheen. “It’s terrible,” she said, blaming pollution for the changing colors.

Moira Zellner, a professor of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University, who grew up in Buenos Aires and worked as an environmental consultant on river and land remediation projects there in the 1990s, blamed “chronic lack of regulation and lack of enforcement” for the region’s pollution problems.

“Unfortunately, I’m not too surprised,” she said of the red color of the stream in Sarandí. “There’s a huge, long history of pollution in the rivers of Buenos Aires, and it’s really heartbreaking. I know some of the populations that have settled there are really suffering from the consequences.”

Carlos Colángelo, the president of the Professional Council of Chemistry for the Province of Buenos Aires, told a local news outlet, infobae.com, that he was concerned that chemicals could have been dumped into the stream.

“We have to wait for the results of the analysis, but we can say that a company that would have dumped this is totally unscrupulous,” he said. “I don’t think they are chemical professionals because under no circumstances would they have allowed this waste to be dumped into the water.”