The unbridled advance of urbanizations and the inadequate management of water sources in Dosquebradas are leading this iconic place to a slow and, apparently, inexorable extinction
By Oscar Osorio Ospina
60 years ago, the developer Jaime Giraldo and Juan Evencio Cardona, his trusted man, were far from imagining that Lake La Pradera, the site they decided to build to give Dosquebradas a place for recreation and a refuge for biodiversity, would be sentenced to disappearance by the action of man.
And that is exactly what is happening now, according to the warning voice just released by the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Risaralda. “Several man-generated phenomena occur in the Lake: one of them has to do with mass removals, due to the high concentrations of construction in the northern part of it and areas of the Chisperos stream, which make these lakes come suffering a clogging process that causes the lake’s bathymetry, that is, its depth, to be lost. There appears a series of clusters and nodes that make its biological condition end up suffering a phenomenon of oxidation, decomposition of organic matter and that affects the biological stability of the Lake, warned Julio César Gómez Salazar, director of the Cárder.
Let’s do a little history, before continuing with the sad current x-ray of this place, nestled in the geography of the urban area of Dosquebradas.
The initiative to build Lake La Pradera, as a family recreational park, arose in 1963, when Juan Evencio Cardona proposed it to Jaime Giraldo, the promoter of large urban developments in Dosquebradas. At that time, the only entertainment and meeting place for the inhabitants of this conurbation were the Matecaña de Pereira Zoo and its surroundings.
“We said: that is a pole of development, el verraco, we are going to bring people here. We have this water from the streams, we are going to stop it while that lake fills up, in any case we got into that ride. It is a very beautiful story because it was made by intrepid people, we had machinery, there was the canal and half of the land, the other half belonged to the person who had sold Jaime Giraldo the land, so there was a need to buy the other piece to complete the lake”, as Cardona recalled in dialogue with EL DIARIO. The land to which he refers was owned by the Marín family, better known as Los Marimones.
The construction of the lake also included the transfer of a complete guadual tree, which was on one side of the road near the Marín house, work that was done with two bulldozers and using the road that had been opened in La Pradera.
The spa began operating in 1964 with the attraction of three lakes: an upper one for fishing with an area of 4,732 square meters and three islands, the central lake for canoes with 9,932 square meters and four islands, and the lower lake or the lotos with 1,350 square meters which is the one that drains into the La Víbora stream. The artificial lakes were built in the form of locks that use the Chisperos and La Mina streams, which had abundant flow.
In its heyday, this site offered visitors an incomparable landscape with its meadows in an excellent state of conversation, a booth with a capacity for 600 people, soccer, volleyball and basketball courts, canoes, battery baths, an educational transit park, trees, ornamental plants and a varied fauna made up of wild birds, ducks and geese.
The Metropolitan Area and the Mayor’s Office of Dosquebradas, through public deed 3045 of September 24, 1985, purchased this property of 73,373 square meters from the Guayacanes Society, of which 17,000 square meters correspond to the three lakes. The deed was signed by the mayor of Pereira and legal representative of the Metropolitan Area, Rodrigo Ocampo Ossa, the mayor of Dosquebradas, Alfredo Torres Hurtado, and the legal representative of the Guayacanes Society, Jaime Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo.
Then, by means of public deed 2415 of October 29, 1986, the Metropolitan Area with the figure of bailment or loan in use, delivered to the Municipality of Dosquebradas the part corresponding to that entity. This deed is signed by the Mayor of Pereira and representative of the Area, Gustavo Orozco Restrepo, and the Mayor of Dosquebradas, Jorge Eliécer Sabas Bedoya.
In November 1986, the Casa de la Cultura, given the abandonment of Lake La Pradera, took over its administration, managing to completely recover the well-known spa. In 1991, the agreement was signed with the Municipality of Dosquebradas to continue this task, which was renewed in 1996. And since 2009, the administration of Lake La Pradera was once again assumed by the Mayor’s Office of Dosquebradas.
The current state of Lake La Pradera is unfortunate, as the director of the Cárder was able to verify in a tour that he carried out in the place in the company of his officials. “We show that many of the construction companies that have developments in that area have not made the proper boundaries and protections. Due to the La Niña phenomenon, that is, intense downpours, and given that Dosquebradas is the second area with the highest rainfall in the world, this has caused these landslides and large masses of land to be transferred and we have a very great impact.” said Gomez Salazar.
At the same time, the sanctioning procedures are being carried out against those who have not properly managed that area, but according to what the director of Cárder states: “there is a very high rate of responsibility from the Dosquebradas Mayor’s Office every time the Lago is a son, he is a subject of rights for the Municipality and he has not exercised it in an adequate way”.
For now, the environmental authority has implemented an improvement plan in what has to do with forest areas, an action to clean the Lake that will involve removing the sludge and substrates that are already there to take them to a suitable site or submit them. to a dehydration process in order to recover the bathymetry and capacity of Lake La Pradera.
The director of Cárder assures that the marsh and lacustrine ecosystems of wetlands have a condition that they can be recovered, as will happen in this case with Lake La Pradera. But it cannot be ignored that in Dosquebradas, both these lakes with more than 60 years of existence, as well as many wetlands are seriously threatened by irresponsible developers and by the permissive action of the municipal authorities in charge of their care.