The guy who delivers my groceries told me that when he was a lad he couldn’t see the boulders in the river, they were all under water! He said that you needed courage to cross over because it was so deep and it often overflowed its banks after heavy rain and even went above the level of bridges when it was in spate!
My brother, who is part of an ecological group, tells me that it is because the vegetation has been felled along the river banks, thus there is no biomass to hold water in the soil and it just runs away and evaporates very quickly.
I asked him about rainfall and whether it has diminished. Last month was a record for high temperatures and low rainfall. Our summer time is our rainy season but it hasn’t rained now for three weeks !!!
He told me that no-one records rainfall where he lives in Itariri and I suspect no one does so here in Toledo either, so we don’t know if this is part of a patter brought on by falling rainfall, higher temperatures and de-forestation.
What I do know is that the river is drying up !!!
There is no alternative source for water supplies other than wells, and guess what?
DRY!!!
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