Guatemalan President Oscar Berger launched a plan late last month to clean up picturesque but highly polluted Lake Amatitlán, the first of seven so-called mega-projects he hopes to inaugurate while in office. The project, being carried out with a US$29 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), aims to save the lake in five years. But it also is intended as a first step toward two more ambitious goals—to upgrade Guatemala’s largely unregulated sewage and industrial liquid-waste system and to secure a new water source for the Guatemalan capital, where demand exceeds supply. The six-square-mile (15-sq-km) lake, ringed by mountains and in view of volcanoes, was once an idyllic weekend getaway for city dwellers... [Log in to read more]