Playa del Carmen Launches Water Quality Monitoring Project

Playa del Carmen — A joint initiative is underway to monitor water quality in Playa del Carmen. The collaborative effort aims to detect the points in the city where the most contamination is generated and to determine priority areas for attention.

Alejandro López Tamayo, Director General of Centinelas del Agua, reported that the project is being coordinated with the Colleges of Architects and Engineers, private initiative, and local authorities.

Detecting Points with the Highest Contamination

López Tamayo indicated that the importance of this initiative is to detect the points where the most contamination is generated, as everything that affects the environment goes directly to the beaches, which are the main attraction of this important tourist destination.

“This water quality monitoring project came about jointly with the College of Engineers and the College of Architects, the private initiative, the Playa del Carmen City Council, and Centinelas del Agua, precisely with the goal of evaluating which zones are the priority to address to avoid contamination of the aquifer or to see what degree of contamination exists in the neighborhoods of Playa del Carmen. Let’s remember that the contamination is what goes to the beaches of this tourist destination.”

Collecting Samples at Different Points

He added that they are creating monitoring wells and collecting samples in urban cenotes and the tourist zone, primarily in the Ejido and Colosio neighborhoods. Because these are some of the oldest settlements, many homes lack sewer systems and instead connect directly to the caves and cenotes that run underground.

“We made monitoring wells, we collected samples in some cenotes within the hotel zone, and with that we identified some zones that presented a higher concentration of certain nutrients, which could possibly indicate a greater concentration of contamination. Some of these zones are found in the Ejido and Colosio areas, where many lots were not connected to the sewer system, with wastewater going directly into the caves and cenotes.”