Saturday, January 28, 2012

Xolotlan

One of our students at Apoyo Spanish School, Douglas Haynes, writes professionally and is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and one of his themes is life in Nicaragua. Our staff helped provide information and sources with this article he wrote about the grim fate of Lake Xolotlan, also called Lake Managua. "The Lake at the Bottom of the Bottom" appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Xolotlan

The pollution of Lake Xolotlan is severe, but the poor people living in its vicinity have no choice but to use it. Haynes discusses the lake, its people, and an intent to remediate the levels of contaminants in it. Agricultural and municipal runoff affect it as well as chemical contaminants such as mercury. What could have been a tourist attraction, is an environmental disaster. So much wonderful water, wasted!

Not all is lost. Mother earth has her healing ways. Xolotlan is far from dead-in fact, it is teeming with life. In fact, four bird species in Nicaragua were first reported along the shores of Xolotlan (Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Long-billed Dowitcher, Wilson's Plover, and Baird's Sandpiper), in 2008.

Apoyo Spanish School is the oldest existing Spanish School in Nicaragua. It is where we met the author of this article, Douglas Haynes. If you would like Spanish instruction from a professionally-run school, please contact us.

Xolotlan
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