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Tourist visa changes may be short-lived
City has second thoughts on getting rid of the Avenida Central Peatonal

Urban planning in Panama, such as it has been and may become

Emancipated high school girls expelled

The strange tale of Captain Sherman

Flowing in the streets of the capital
Panama News Briefs

Gross encounters of the everyday kind

Yuck! It's yet more sewage flowing in the streets. Although the sewer cap has been stolen, that didn't cause the overflow. Panama City's antiquated and abused sewer system --- which is overseen by the national government's IDAAN water and sewer utility rather than the municipal government, so don't blame the mayor or your representante --- is overflowing in many parts of the capital, in rich neighborhoods and poor.

IDAAN puts a lot of the blame on restaurants that pour grease into sanitary sewers, which when mixed with other chemicals hardens into a rock-like substance. People who throw trash in the sewers and storm drains also contribute to the problem. But also, between years of bad maintenance by IDAAN and countless connections of sanitary waste flows into the storm drains or runoff rain into sanitary sewers, largely due to errors or intentional abuses during the construction of new buildings, heavy storms tend to overflow the sewers as well as the storm drains.

If, as promised, the building of a new metro sewer and sewage treatment system is really coming soon, much of this problem will begin to be sorted out. However, it would take years of diligent enforcement and maintenance to eliminate all the improper dumping of sewage into storm drains and all the leaks of storm water into the sanitary sewers.

At most times, people don't notice the problem. However, we are having an unusually rainy year and the stench become unmistakable.

Photo by Eric Jackson

Tourist visa changes may be short-lived
City has second thoughts on getting rid of the Avenida Central Peatonal

Urban planning in Panama, such as it has been and may become

Emancipated high school girls expelled

The strange tale of Captain Sherman

Flowing in the streets of the capital
Panama News Briefs