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Our news team was in Orange Walk Town for that conversation, and Daniel Ortiz reports:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
The Gala Lounge in Orange Walk Town was filled to near standing room only on Friday night when the Department of Environment hosted the Public Consultation for the New River.

Residents had witnessed its condition worsening for years, but more vividly over the last few months during the drought.

They now wanted to hear what the environmental authorities had to say about this important water body, what caused it to become polluted, how to fix it, and who is to blame.

Dr. Percival Cho - CEO, Ministry of Environment
"We feel that there is a great need for clear and accurate information. There is a lot of scientific explanation to what we're seeing, and it's not just entirely pollution and someone - or an industry - is attempting to kill the river. There's a lot of science behind it, and we intend to provide that information to you tonight in the simplest form possible."

So, the loudest message delivered at the public consultation was that all human activities have contributed to the New River's contamination. Orange Walk residents living near it and those who conduct commercial or industrial activities close to its banks have, in some way, caused its current polluted state.

Dr. Ed Boles - Presenter
"The New River is again dominated by agriculture, so you begin to see, if you being to look at these 2 diagrams, you'll see how much agriculture really takes precedence on the western side of the river."

"Agriculture carries a lot of its own impacts. There's a lot of pesticide usage. There's aerial spraying. There are fertilizers, sediments and other things that are associated with agriculture."

"You see a stream system, for example, going through an agricultural field, and that stream system has been stripped of the riparian forest. The riparian forests are extremely important. That's the forest that lines the rivers. That's the's the filtration system of the landscape. And we're losing riparian forests, not only in Belize but throughout Belize at an alarming rate."

"There are several industries along the river, not just 1, but several and these are just the larger ones. There are also small industries that are along the river too, and all industries that are using water, processing foods, or processing chemicals of one kind, or another, eventually discharging that water back into the river."

"We also have a lot of urban areas around the system. If you look on a Google Earth map, you'll see these urban sites, clustered along the river bank. And typically, what happens is the riparian forests around these areas are being removed. And there are also storm drains that lead from urban areas into the river itself. And this is untreated water. And as storm waters are moving over urban landscapes, they're picking up fecal material from pets and livestock, from septic tanks, and other sources."

"Urban areas are kind of full [inaudible] of concentration of pollutants. And again, we have to kind of thin of our particular role in all of this." "All of these different components begin to concentrate, and that's what's been happening over the years."

"Everybody that flushes a toilet. Everybody that uses resources, we're all contributors to that. So, if we really want to clean up the river, we've got to start with ourselves."

These concepts seemed easy enough to understand, but when one of the Environmental Officers presented the results of their recent water quality tests, the technical science behind it was oppressive and tough to follow as a normal layperson. Just listen to this excerpt.

Aldo Cansino - Environmental Officer
"Phosphorus, you have in phosphorus, similarly, like nitrates, there's a particular range that you would expect to see in any healthy river system. You would have where you have 0.1 to 0.5. Anything above that, you're talking about -you're talking about inputs that can really affect the water body."

During the discovery of the New River's dire state, many fingers were being pointed at BSI, as the supposed biggest offender that's been polluting it. But, according to the DOE, the situation is not so simple for BSI.

Anthony Mai - Environmental Officer, DOE
"We took water quality from 2 points, here and here, discharge, and discharge in the river. So, this is discharge coming directly out of the cooling ponds. Here, they are complying with the law. The temperature here, the law says that the wastewater must be at 35 degrees. When we tested it, it was at 37.8, 2.8 above what the law is saying. The PH, nitrates, phosphates, everything seems okay. But then, when you reach to the sulfates, the law says that they should discharge at 200. They are discharging at 524. Chemical oxygen demand, the law says that 200, they are 79 units above. But, look at what is very interesting. This is coming directly from BSI. This is the discharge into the river. The BOD is higher than what BSI is discharging."

"In terms of total suspended solids, it went up by 8.4 points. The temperature went down, obviously because it went through that cooling drain system. The PH remains okay, but then, the nitrates, phosphates, sulfates and chemical oxygen demand are all elevated. That means then, that the water quality is a little bit worse."

"Than this here. So it means that between here, here and something come here, there are somethings adding to the water."

While they continue to investigate the cause of poor water quality near to BSI's facility, the Department of Environment has come up with a course of action that they want to pursue, in an effort to help reduce the pollution pressure that Orange Walk Town places on the New River.

Anthony Mai - Environmental Officer, DOE
"We met with the Orange Walk Town Council, and we got a list of the trade license holders, and there are some that we have identified that we need meet, discuss, and look at their wastewater management, and then help them, not charge them, not bring down the law on them, because our approach is to work with everyone. So, we want to sit with them, to help them to put the correct measures in place to protect the environment."

"So, all the different restaurants, the bars, the hotels, the corn tortilla factories, the poultry, the meat shops, the mechanic shops, we want to meet with these people. We want to ask them, what are you doing with your wastewater? And we'll say, let's work together to put something in place, so that your water doesn't go into the river, and if it goes into the river, it is treated, and it is proper."