This water is raising a red flag.
A canal in Argentina mysteriously turned bright red on Thursday, alarming residents who were woken up by its strong odor.
“The smell woke us up. In the daytime, when we looked at this side of the river, it was completely red, all stained,” Avellaneda resident Maria Ducomls told AFP.
“It looked like a river covered in blood, it’s horrible.”
Water samples have been taken from the Sarandí Canal, located in a suburb of Buenos Aires, to determine the cause of the color change, which could be an “organic dye,” according to the province’s Ministry of the Environment.
Residents are blaming local leather and textile factories, which are known to dump dye and chemical waste into the waterway, which flows into the Río de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay.
“Other times it was yellow, with an acidic smell that makes us sick even in the throat,” a local named Silvia told the BBC.
“We have seen the river in other colors — we’ve seen it bluish, greenish, pink, purplish, with grease on top that looks like oil,” Ducomls revealed.
Article by:Source:
