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Harbors Regain Their Sparkle
by Capt. John Rains
Cleanup drives make Acapulco and Manzanillo more beautiful
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Like everyone else, I had hoped that eventually some environmental good would come of the new North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regulations. But I was surprised to see just how quickly things are changing, at least in Acapulco and Manzanillo.
Upon entering Bahia de Acapulco in February, I noticed immediately how much less litter was visible out to sea on the approaches, and along the bustling waterfront as well.
Here's why.
Each day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 18 bright yellow-orange catamarans with big outboards spread out from the municipal pier and cover the bay. On board, municipal workers in special uniforms are armed with scoop nets on long poles, and they spend 12 hours a day in two shifts just picking up litter.
Not only do they sweep along the ocre-colored sandy beaches that line Acapulco Bay, they also comb the rocky reefs that stick out like groins between the beaches, and the dozen or so islets and small islands that attract scuba and snorkel diving tourists.
Here, the trash collectors pull up sunken junk that gets trapped among the rocks and barnacles. In the first two weeks of the campaign, they collected what seemed like a zillion tons of plastic bags, styrofoam cups, cigarette filters and the like.
Besides the catamarans, 10 new personal watercraft jet around scouting trash that needs to be picked up, and spotting litter bugs. The drivers of the jet boats radio dispatch the catamaran scoopers to the exact locations where they're needed.
The cleanup boats and their jet boat scouts make a good presence and draw attention to the waterborne trash solution, but that's only half the story. Heading this campaign in Acapulco is Alfonso Arnold, the owner of the Arnold Brothers dive shop.
Being a lifelong scuba diver, he had long been a proponent of keeping the water clean. But not until recently did he win financial support from the local government for his efforts.
"You can't just clean up the litter from the bay," Arnold said. "You have to begin by cleaning up the hillsides, the canyons and all the streets of Acapulco. If you don't begin
there, when the first rain comes, all the trash is washed down into the bay, and we're back where we started."
So, the mayor's office gave him what he needed. Two dozen brand new Mercedes Benz garbage trucks were purchased, and with them, 100 bright yellow-orange trash cans on wheels with long pikes and giant brooms were paraded down the ,/malecon==, or seawall.
The campaign's main slogan is stenciled on the trash cans, which are placed all over town. For years to come, they'll still urge visitors and residents to ,/"ponga basura en su lugar:"== Put litter in its place.
If you've visited Acapulco, you know how steep the hills are that encircle the bay. The area looks like the inside of a flooded volcanic caldera, with its seaward side opened up to the south.
Many of the streets are simply too narrow and steep for the big garbage trucks, so the wheeled trash cans are a perfect solution. Uniformed litter collectors push the cans up and down the rocky side streets, sweeping and picking up loose bits of paper and plastic.
The slogan ,/"ponga basura en su lugar"== is seen mostly along the waterfront, along Avenida Costera Miguel Aleman -- but it's also seen inland, thanks to trash cans and billboards. It's beginning to sink into the local thinking.
With the anti-litter campaign launched and working well, the city is now turning its sights on chemical polluters. Visiting boaters should be aware of how much is being done to protect the bay.
Both the Club de Yates de Acapulco and the new La Marina de Acapulco are installing pumpout stations for their guests. For others, holding tanks must be pumped far outside the bay.
Be sure to recycle your used motor oil through the yacht club or marina services, so it won't end up in a storm drain leading back down to the bay. Both these boating facilities take used oil to a private enterprise in town that filters it and resells it as a low-grade recycled oil.
For a country with lots of oil resources and a nationalized petroleum industry, the fact that any oil gets recycled is pretty remarkable.
Acapulco's port captain, Ildefonso Carillo Mora, recently came to Acapulco from his last post in Manzanillo, 290 nautical miles to the northwest. Manzanillo recently went through its own harbor cleanup, of a much different nature.Manzanillo is Mexico's busiest commercial port on the Pacific coast, and it's also a Pemex fueling facility for large ships. As a result of heavy traffic, its waters became polluted with floating oil and commercial garbage -- not the little plastic food wrappers that were once common in Acapulco.
In a combined effort of the port captain's office and the local battalion of the Mexican Navy, oil spill combat equipment was brought in and used around the commercial docks. Now, each morning, a navy patrol boat goes around the harbor skimming up floating trash.
In the past -- and mainly due to the dirty water -- most pleasureboats visiting Manzanillo Bay had chosen to anchor or moor away from Manzanillo's downtown harbor, opting instead for the luxurious Las Hadas Marina or the anchorages at Ensenada Carrizal, Ensenada Higueras, or Bahia La Audiencia. This season, however, more cruisers are finding that Manzanillo's handy downtown anchorage is a lot cleaner and prettier than they had expected.
By the way -- and perhaps not coincidentally -- there's a very good pumpout station at the fuel dock at Las Hadas Marina.
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This article first appeared in the May 1, 1994 issue of Sea Magazine. All or parts of the information contained in this article might be outdated. |
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