Dagma reveals water quality of Cali’s rivers

Personnel from the Dagma Environmental Laboratory carry out sampling tasks in the Pance River.

The Water Quality Index (WQI) in the rivers of Cali is between good and acceptable.
Wastewater would be responsible for affecting the quality of the rivers in the capital of Valle del Cauca.
The Pance River has the best water quality among Cali rivers

Santiago de Cali, May 6, 2024

The Administrative Department of Environmental Management (Dagma) of Cali has carried out a detailed evaluation of the Water Quality Index (WQI) in the city’s rivers, revealing encouraging results on the state of these important natural resources.

According to the analyzes carried out by the Dagma Environmental Laboratory, the quality of the water in the rivers of Cali is in a range between good and acceptable, highlighting the excellent rating obtained by the Pance River, which has proven to be the one with the best quality among the Cali bodies of water.

“We have found that the city’s rivers have good water quality, with the Pance River being the one that so far shows us the best AQI with a value of 0.93 and 0.96, classifying it as good,” said the coordinator of the Dagma Environmental Laboratory. , engineer Édgar Humberto Herrera, who also specified that to date the Lili, Aguacatal, Cañaveralejo and Meléndez rivers have also been studied.

(Read also: The Dagma joins the inter-institutional efforts to protect the Farallones of Cali)

According to the coordinator of the Dagma Environmental Laboratory, these evaluations provide essential information to monitor and guarantee the health of the city’s rivers, as well as to detect possible pollution problems in a timely manner, since the ICA is a vital indicator that reflects the general physicochemical conditions of water quality in a stream.

“The ICA is calculated from the relationship between five parameters: Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), pH, Electrical Conductivity, Total Suspended Solids and Dissolved Oxygen. This last index, the closer it is to 1, indicates a higher degree of quality in a body of water,” Herrera explained.

The Water Quality Index values are classified into different ranges, from very bad to good, and offer a clear view of the state of water bodies in Cali. In this exercise, the Cañaveralejo, Meléndez and Pance rivers have proven to have good to acceptable water quality at the entrance to the urban perimeter.

The Dagma Environmental Laboratory, which due to recommendations from the relief agencies and the Secretariat for Emergency and Disaster Risk Management, had to suspend sampling due to the possibility of sudden floods in the rivers, announced that once sampling resumes They will be made in the Cali River.

In this way, the Mayor’s Office of Santiago de Cali continues to work on the implementation of effective environmental policies, promoting citizen participation in the conservation of the District’s natural resources.

To take into account…

Water Quality Index (WQI) values are classified as Very poor: red (0.00–0.25); Bad: orange (0.26–0.50); Regular: yellow (0.51–0.70); Acceptable: green (0.71–0.90) and Good: blue (0.91–1.00).