FACTORTIERRA

The contamination tarnishes the Pearl of Chira.   By Mako Fernández Guerrero , Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo , & Ronald Zevallos Muro . Photographs by Franco Alburqueque .   SULLANA, Peru – The rumor –because no one confirmed the source—ran like spread powder: the second most dangerous city of Peru after Callao. The inexistent tourism vanished, the Sullana-natives  abroad were seen bad, coming to this city from other places equaled to enter a war zone.   Until 2013, the second most important city of Piura, one of the 20 most important ones in Peru (after the 15 th place), concentrated about 150,000 people of 1.7 million who lived across Piura Department , according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (2007). It’s the capital city of Sullana Province and it hosted the half of its population, according to the same source.   Where have the ddiscouraging merit come out from? It was repeated, it was repeated, and even it provocated an emerge...

How did it start up and break the first plant to process solid residues across Piura?   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo . Photos by Simon Garragate .   SULLANA, Peru – A cistern truck gets again to a sewer hole at the skirts of Bellavista City toward El Cucho Village. It contains residual water from Humboldt squid process that is made at the Industrial Zone. The Sullana Province’s Municipality (MPS as its initials in Spanish) admits that the equivalent to 70 vehicles of that kind (about 30 tons each one) eliminate residual water to Chira River through that hole. This means 2.1 million liters every 24 hours.   “It’s rich in ammonia and nitrogen,” the manager of one processing plants explains to me. The liquid smells bad, but it is not polluting technically neither legally, first, because it’s about an enriched fluid, second, because the Peruvian Criminal Code does not specify the stench as a cause of contamination crime.   But, the things change when the whole spill...