CONTAMINATION with chemicals, throughout the La Villa River basin in activities such as agriculture has not been controlled for years, although the problem was identified in 2008 in an Environmental Plan of Land Management.
Today the basin is contaminated with atrazine which led to the declaration of a state of emergency, and leaving scores of thousands of homes unable to use water for drinking, cooking or washing.

The Environmental Land Management Plan for the river basin 2008, said that water quality in six sampling stations established by the National Environmental Authority between 2004 and 2005, reported the upper reaches were slightly contaminated, reports La Prensa.
The same report revealed that sites evaluated in the middle and lower sections presented polluted waters, hat may be considered not suitable sites for human consumption or for recreational use and industrial and agriculture should be severely restricted.
One of the mainpollution problems facing the river is rubbish because six municipalities located within thewatershed (Chitre, Pesé, Los Pozos, Las Minas, Macaracas, and the district of La Villa de Los Santos ) deposited daily garbage in rivers, streams and swamps, resulting in the loss of water quality and wildlife that develops in it.
It was recently reported that the laboratories of the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (IDAAN) do not have the analytical capability to detect chemical contamination, such as thatcurrently registered in the lower basin of the river.
The head of MoH Water Quality in Los Santos, Alexis De La Cruz, said investigations have been conducted on the La Villa River have been of a microbiological nature, which in recent years have found high levels of coliform on the final leg of the lower basin, where dumping of sewage is recorded.
De La Cruz said that the current atrazine contamination was discovered after the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) registered a complaint with the Public Ministry for river contamination.
The Institute of Legal Medicine, intervened later when the Forensic Toxicology Laboratory discovered the presence of the chemical in samples of atrazine in the lower basin of the river.
An evaluation of the physico-chemical and microbiological quality of the river basin La Villa, made between 2010 and 2011 during the rainy and dry seasons by the MoH Los Santos, warned that the water in the lower part of the river basin's Villa could be used for irrigation, under certain restrictions and needed intensive physical-chemical treatment and deep disinfection