Even before the world economic crisis, Mexico’s swine flu epidemic and the bloody clashes recently between drug traffickers and security forces here, visits to this Pacific coast city by foreign tourists had been on the wane in part for a very different reason. The problem was sewage-tainted seawater, and many critics blamed it on Aguas Blancas, a wastewater treatment plant that was opened in 1990 and has just been dismantled as part of a sweeping water-quality-improvement initiative. Aguas Blancas, which processed 60-80% of Acapulco’s wastewater, had essentially ceased to function by October 2006, says Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua). The results, according to the federal agency, were “possible impacts on the health of the population and contamination of the ocean.” Now in... [Log in to read more]