Part II

V. Environmental Impact: A Preliminary Assessment

The Cuban technical literature suggests that there is increasing concern in the country about the adverse environmental consequences of damming the country's rivers. A major worry is that the low volume of freshwater flowing below the dams alters nature's ecological balance by drastically reducing the water's oxygen level and the amount of freshwater reaching the coasts. Equally troublesome are sea water intrusions made possible by reduced freshwater flows. In some cases, sea waters may even reach the dams' walls. As a result, the rivers' beds and adjacent fields have become contaminated by salts (Tapanes, 1981:39).

Historically, water had been extracted from some of Cuba's major aquifers at a higher rate than they were recharged, but in recent years the pace of water extraction appears to have intensified. Reports of salt water intrusions along coastal areas suggest the overexploitation of underground fresh water stores (World Bank, 1992:47). Surface waters diverted into man-made reservoirs can interfere with the natural recharge of aquifers. High evaporation rates from tropical region reservoirs can have adverse environmental impacts by increasing the concentration of minerals in irrigation water. If proper drainage and flushing practices are not followed, the high mineral content of irrigation waters and their rapid evaporation while flowing through irrigation canals and in the fields can contribute to soil salinization. Some of these issues are examined below.

Contamination of Surface Waters

Surface waters have been contaminated by industrial wastes and by the chemical runoff associated with the use of increasing amounts (before drying up of imports during the Special Period) of chemical pesticides and herbicides. There is ample evidence of dumping of industrial wastes in rivers and bays (see, for example, Dávalos, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c, 1984d; Emprende, 1985). González Báez and Jiménez Hechevarría (1988b:18-24) have pointed out to sugar mills as the main source of pollutants, although untreated urban sewage, industrial pollutants, and agricultural chemical inputs are also to blame. Seventy percent of the gross weight of the sugar cane processed in the mills is water, and another 15 percent is bagasse (Varela Pérez, 1976). The contamination of Havana harbor has received the most attention (United Nations, 1985), but many other Cuban harbors are equally polluted (Schlachter, 1990; Solares, 1993:16).

The amount of chemicals used in agriculture was projected in 1976 to increase from one million tons to between 8 and 12 million tons by 1990-2000 (Report of Cuba, 1976:54). Such chemical contamination decreases the usefulness of water for human and agricultural uses. The World Bank's (1992:47) global review of environmental issues in development concluded that "it is often more important to prevent contamination of groundwater than of surface water. Aquifers do not have the self-cleansing capacity of rivers and, once polluted, are difficult and costly to clean."

The reduction in water volume carried by many rivers, particularly during the dry season, is having adverse environmental consequences. In Cuban rivers with no or little runoff during the dry season, "sewage volume can surpass several times the stream flow" (Report of Cuba, 1976:54). The diversion of surface waters for irrigation and other uses is implicated in the increased pollution of many of Cuba's rivers. The resultant reduction in water flow aggravates the contamination of the rivers, an old problem in Cuba, since the rivers lose part of their capacity to carry away or dilute contaminants. For decades, sewage and industrial contaminants from urban areas and the sugar cane waste products generated by sugar mills in rural areas were directly discharged into rivers and streams. This problem is reported to have affected numerous rivers, including the Almendares (Emprende ciudad, 1985; Gumá, 1989), Luyanó (Gómez, 1985), and Quibú (Hernández Pardo, 1975). Surface pollution eventually reaches underground water stores.

Similar problems are reported in other parts of the country as the number and capacity of water reservoirs has increased, river flows have declined, and the discharge of organic material and other pollutants increased. Reduced water flow also contributes to a higher sedimentation rate in rivers. In Cuba, the danger of contaminating underground waters is high since the carsick aquifers found in much of the country facilitate the flow of large amounts of subterranean waters (La contaminación, 1975).

Contamination and Losses of Underground Waters

By 1976, Cuba was already reporting that the country's major environmental problem was the intrusion of salt waters along coastal areas (Report of Cuba, 1976:58). A 1980 report (Shayakubov and Morales, 1980:10-11) remarks that the scope of this problem was alarming. All along Cuba's southern coast, the inland intrusion of salt water reached between 2 and 15 kilometers. Official sources attribute this environmental damage is attributed to the indiscriminate use of underground water for irrigation prior to the revolution. This is not a convincing argument, however, since prior to the revolution, irrigation was relatively sparingly used in Cuba. Whereas in 1958, 160,000 hectares were being irrigated, by 1982 land under irrigation had increased to 900,000 hectares, or by a factor of six (Riego, 1982:63).

The diversion of rainwater into reservoirs and a high rate of extraction of underground freshwater is associated with the salinization of aquifers along the coastline. The best documented case concerns the aquifers bordering the low-lying coastal region of Havana province (Salazar, 1991). This aquifer supplies water to some of Cuba's richest agricultural regions (e.g., Güira de Melena) and the city of Havana, contributing 200 million cubic meters per annum of water for human and agricultural uses.

In 1985, an underground dyke (Dique Sur) of approximately 100 kilometers in length, running from Majana in the West to Batabanó in the East, with a width of seven meters and a depth of between two to four meters, began to be built. Its objective is to arrest the inland infiltration of saltwater--and prevent freshwater losses to the seas--by impeding water flows in either direction, thus contributing to the replenishment of the aquifer with freshwater. The design of the dyke includes drainage canals to facilitate the flow of excess surface water during the rainy season. It is claimed that by 1991 the Dique Sur had helped reduce the freshwater runoff by 90 percent, and the level of salinization in the aquifer declined from 4.44 grams per liter in 1982 to one gram per liter in 1991, making the water suitable for human consumption. This claim seems to be an exaggeration considering that contamination of underground water resources is very difficult to reverse.

The location of this aquifer and its history suggest that the salt water intrusions may have resulted from three main causes: (1) the diversion of groundwater that normally would replenish aquifers to reservoirs; (2) the continued excessive drawing of aquifer waters to serve the needs of the city of Havana; and (3) the increasing use of aquifer water for irrigation. Between 1970 and 1988, 16 reservoirs, with a total capacity of 458 million cubic meters of water, were built in Havana province (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1989: 175). In the neighboring province of Pinar del Río, during the same time period (1969-89), 21 dams with a total storage capacity of 832 million cubic meters were constructed. Some of these reservoirs were to provide water to urban populations, but mostly were built to irrigate crops with high water consumption, such as sugar cane, citrus, and rice.

In recent years, in an attempt to increase the country's self-sufficiency in rice, one of Cuba's main food staples, large-scale cultivation of this very water-intensive crop with a fairly high tolerance to salty waters has been expanded (Colina and Peláez, 1976). While under the right circumstances rice cultivation may contribute to the desalinization of the soil, this crop could well aggravate the problem if proper agricultural practices are not followed, or if poor quality waters are used for irrigation (Martín Alonso, 1976; Sotolongo and Abreu, 1992:165-166). In the last twenty years, citrus cultivation, also a water intensive process (Bianchi Ross, 1985:24), has also increased phenomenally, with many of the country's citrus plantations being located along the Southern coast of Central and Western Cuba. The very large water needs of these crops and the network of reservoirs that was built must have reduced the amount of water flowing to the aquifers of Pinar del Río and Havana provinces.

Since the potential for increasing the capacity of reservoirs in these two provinces, but particularly in the province of Havana whose landscape is dominated by plains, is limited, the water needs of sugar cane, citrus, and rice had to be served with irrigation water drawn or diverted from aquifers. This agricultural development strategy is consistent with the Soviet agricultural practices adopted in Cuba that relied heavily on the use of chemical inputs, irrigation, and mechanization, and was extended even to sugar cane, a crop that in pre-revolutionary Cuba only exceptionally was subjected to large scale irrigation.

Last but by no means least, excessive water pumping from the aquifers serving the province of Ciudad Habana and urban agglomerations in Havana province are certain to have contributed to the salinization of underground waters. Between 1954 and 1964, the water table surrounding the basins of the Ariguanabo and Almendares rivers dropped between six and eight meters (Egorov and Luege, 1967:24). In 1967, the Ariguanabo watershed supplied water to the towns of Bauta, Corralillo, Bejucal and San Antonio de los Baños. The water consumption of these towns at the time was 55 million cubic meters a year. In addition, a textile plant in the region used 5 million cubic meters, irrigation 30 million cubic meters, and other agricultural uses 1.5 million cubic meters, for a total of 99 million cubic meters. Yet, the replenishment capacity of underground waters in the Ariguanabo watershed was of only 77 million cubic meters annually (Egorov and Luege, 1967:51).

At the time, the Almendares watershed, the main water source for greater Havana, was experiencing an annual deficit of 46 million cubic meters: whereas 221 million cubic meters were extracted, the aquifer received only 175 million cubic meters annually (Egorov and Luege, 1967:54). The conclusion of the hydrologists conducting the study was that were extraction rates to remain at those levels, the inevitable result would be a continuous drop in the water table and/or the eventual exhaustion of underground water stores. As we have pointed out, the diversion of surface waters to irrigation and other uses, population growth, and the absence of measures to reverse the deterioration of water resources, could only have resulted in a significant aggravation of the water supply situation in Western Cuba. In this context, the Southern Dyke may be seen as an expensive effort to arrest the decline of the rich carsick aquifer running from Pinar del Río to Matanzas province.

Contamination and Deterioration of Coastal Regions

With a lower volume of water, and the continuous discharge of organic matter into rivers and other water bodies, oxygen levels in the water are depleted, the flow of rivers is disrupted, less and more polluted freshwater reach important estuary coastal breeding grounds, and the highest density of contaminants reaching the seas has a damaging influence in coral reefs. Aquatic and other life forms suffer as a consequence (Sáenz, 1990; World Bank, 1992:49-50). As in most of the Caribbean, riverine estuaries, coastal lagoons and mangroves have been damaged by upriver human interventions. Barrio Menéndez (1990) reports that as a result of a persistent drought during the late 1980s and the diversion of water to reservoirs, the amount of freshwater reaching Cuba's coastal lagoons--economically important since they serve as hatcheries for shrimp and other species--has declined by 2,243 million cubic meters annually. As a result, many of these lagoons have dried out or are in the process of doing so. In the thirty years from 1960 to 1990, 9,800 hectares of coastal lagoons were damaged. Revealingly, 61 percent of the damage occurred between 1971 and 1985, the period of accelerated reservoir construction. Barrio Menéndez also reports that draught and the diversion of surface waters has also had an adverse effect on mangroves, and has reduced the flow of organic substances reaching coastal areas. Organic material reaching the coastal lagoons are an important food source for juvenile shrimp (Rehabilitan, 1991).

Water diversion to reservoirs is likely to also be implicated in the virtual destruction of the oyster bed and a major decline in the fish catch in the Casilda coastal region of Southern Santa Clara province (Dávalos, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c, 1984d). The artificial oyster bed was at the mouth of the Agabama-Manatí river, a river that in 1984 received 50,000 cubic meters of industrial residues from the Pulpa Cuba paper plant, and also from the FNTA (old Trinidad) sugar mill. The Pulpa Cuba plant, in operation since 1959, was a source of contaminants of the Agabama-Manatí river for many years, but the environmental damage to the Casilda coast did not become alarming until the 1970s. Between 1960 and 1972, in Santa Clara province, four dams with a combined capacity of 780 million cubic meters were completed. The loss of marine life may have resulted from a reduced flow of highly contaminated water completely depleted of oxygen. By 1989, four other dams were under construction in this province (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1989: 175 and 177).

Soil Salinization and Drainage Problems

High evaporation rates from man-made reservoirs and irrigation ditches is contributing to the salinization of Cuba's soils. This problem is aggravated by poor irrigation practices. The World Bank (1992:57) reports that in many regions of the developing world "salinization and waterlogging ... are eating away at the productivity of irrigation investment." It notes further that "the problem is substantially greater in tropical developing countries, where soils, rainfall, and agricultural practices are more conducive to erosion and where many reports have found rates of soil loss well above the natural rate of soil formation" (56).

Significant expanses of Cuba's agricultural lands have been degraded by mineral deposits. It is estimated that one million hectares, or about 14 percent of the country's agricultural surface (6.7 million hectares) have excessive salt deposits (Estudio, 1991). Of these, about 600,000 hectares with light to modest salinization levels could be reclaimed with appropriate techniques and the use of salt-tolerant crops. Badly salinized soils could be improved if treated with organic and mineral compounds. The Cuban regions with the highest salt concentrations are in Guantánamo and the Cauto valley. The salinization of these regions partly responds to man-made causes, but mostly to natural features. Waterlogging associated with the flooding from rapid rainwater runoff, the relative impermeability of the soils, and inadequate drainage are important determinants of salinization in these regions (Exhorta el partido, 1985).

The ambitious irrigation plans were not accompanied by the required complementary drainage facilities to prevent the soils from accumulating excess waters. This was an old problem. In 1979, it had already been reported that drainage facilities were sorely lacking in flood-prone areas, and that frequently irrigation canals were activated before adequate drainage measures were in place (Peñalver, 1979).

About a third of the national territory is affected by an overabundance of water, whether permanently or temporarily. Approximately 1.8 million hectares have drainage problems, or 27 percent of Cuba's total agricultural land. Without proper drainage, salinization of the soil occurs. In the absence of drainage water, the minerals deposited by irrigation remain in the soil as the water is absorbed or evaporates. In 1979, however, Cuba had very limited experience in drainage.

The 1981-85 plan called for a national census of drainage areas; developing a taxonomy of these soils; basic research on the country's aquifers; studies of salt-resistant plants; technical evaluations of the economic potential of soils that could be protected against flooding; and studies about the proper maintenance of drainage facilities.

Even if it had been possible to acquire the basic drainage knowhow anticipated under the 1981-85 plan, it is highly unlikely that much could have been accomplished in the way of constructing a drainage infrastructure during the 1986-90 quinquennium. With the end of the Soviet subsidies and the Special Period, it is safe to assume that most drainage facility work came to a halt. Overall, however, it is difficult to judge the consequences of these developments for the preservation of Cuba's soils, but it is likely that the extraordinary expansion of irrigation in the absence of adequate drainage facilities may have contributed to the further salinization of the country's soils.

VI. Conclusions

Among the tentative conclusions that can be reached from the analysis presented here is that the water policies pursued by the revolutionary authorities have intensified environmental stress in Cuba. Whereas many problems associated with management of water resources were already in evidence by the 1950s (e.g., too rapid extraction of underground waters in the Havana region), the efforts of the last thirty years to expand the urban water supply and increase irrigation may be jeopardizing the sustainability of some of Cuba's main water sources.

The extent to which the authorities have been sensitive to the environmental consequences of these policies is difficult to judge. Despite continued rhetorical attention to environmental conservation, the central planning system is likely to have led in Cuba, as in other socialist countries, to environmental abuse (Feshbach and Friendly, 1992). The most worrisome environmental consequences of the water policies of the revolutionary government appear to be associated with an extensive dam construction program and its implications for the recharge of aquifers and the degradation of coastal areas. Both the mineral load in many of Cuba's aquifers and soil salinization seem to be on the rise.

Some of the reported water-related problems were aggravated by Cuba's relatively limited rainfall during the 1980s. The heavy rains of 1992-93 may have eased the water bottlenecks. An important question yet to be addressed is if the widespread flooding reported during the 1993 "storm of the century" was not partly caused by the disruption of natural river flows. Another important issue is assessing the impact of the Special Period on the national irrigation plan specifically, and more generally, on the country's overall environmental situation. Due to fuel shortages, the use of fuel-driven pumps to draw irrigation water from aquifers must have been curtailed. This and the absence of other inputs is implicated in Cuba's recent poor agricultural performance.

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Table 1

Average Rainfall in Wettest and Driest Months

(in millimeters)

 Year            Wettest          Driest           Ratio of         
            Month             Month              Wettest to         
                                                 Driest Month       
 1975           197                 14              14.1            
 1976           280                 29               9.7            
 1977           315                 21              15.0            
 1978           201                 29               6.9            
 1979           319                 27              11.8            
 1980           186                 20               9.3            
 1981           168                 16              10.5            
 1982           200                 16              12.5            
 1983           193                 43               4.5            
 1984           202                 12              16.8            
 1985           168                 24               7.0            
 1986           196                 17              11.5            
 1987           237                 31               7.6            
 1988           281                 16              17.6            

Source: Comité Estatal (1989):30-31 and earlier issues.

Table 2

Average Annual Rainfall

(in millimeters)

   Year            Average Rainfall            Rainfall Index*           
   1965                 1075                        76.2                 
   1966                 1591                       112.8                 
   1967                 1216                        86.2                 
   1968                 1565                       111.0                 
   1969                 1839                       130.4                 
   1970                 1228                        87.1                 
   1971                 1277                        90.6                 
   1972                 1611                       114.3                 
   1973                 1249                        88.6                 
   1974                 1126                        79.9                 
   1975                 1105                        78.4                 
   1976                 1310                        92.9                 
   1977                 1361                        96.5                 
   1978                 1539                       109.1                 
   1979                 1490                       105.7                 
   1980                 1434                       101.7                 
   1981                 1005                        71.3                 
   1982                 1142                        81.0                 
   1983                 1328                        94.2                 
   1984                 1015                        72.0                 
   1985                 1106                        78.4                 
   1986                  937                        66.5                 
   1987                 1176                        83.4                 
   1988                 1361                        96.5                 

* Long-term average of 1410 mm per annum=100

Source: Comité Estatal (1989) and earlier issues.

Table 3

Length of Principal Rivers, by Province

(in kilometers)

Province, River 		Length
Pinar del Río    
	Cuyaguateje     	112       
	Hondo   		107
	San Diego        	88    

Camagüey   
	San Pedro         	124         
	Las Yeguas              117     
	Saramaguacán            92

La Habana   
	Mayabeque     		55       

Las Tunas   
	Jobabo            	96         
	Chaparra   		86
	Yarigua      		62

Ciudad de la Habana
	Almendares		47

Holguín
	Mayarí      	        106         
	Sagua de Tánamo	        73     
	Nipe			54 
      
Matanzas   
	La Palma   		71       
	San Juan		64
	Canímar		        46

Granma   
	Cauto               	370    
	Bayamo			89
	Cautillo	        68

Villa Clara   
	Sagua la Grande		163
	Sagua la Chica		81

Santiago de Cuba
	Contramaestre		91
	Baconao			62

Cienfuegos
	Hanábana		93
	Arimao			84
	Caunao			82

Sancti Spiritus
	Zaza			155
	Jatibonico del Sur	119
	Agabama or Manati	105

Guantanamo
	Toa			100
	Guantanamo		 98
	Jobabo			 95

isla de la Juventud		 
	Las Nuevas		 31
	Del Medio		 22
	Las Casas		 17

Ciego de Avila
	Caonao			133

Source: Comité Estatal, 1989, p. 22.