‘It’s beautiful when it’s clean’: the Argentine neighbourhood saving a contaminated river

Sewage, dog carcasses and industrial waste clog Argentina’s second most-polluted river.

Meet the activists cleaning it up Twenty-three years ago, María Monges looked around her flooded neighbourhood and knew something had to be done.

Founded in 1998 in Buenos Aires province’s San Martín district, the community of Costa Esperanza sits on the banks of the Reconquista, Argentina’s second most-polluted river and owes its name to the fictional location of a hit Argentine youth telenovela of the time, Verano del 98.

But the real place is very different from the idyllic coastal city where the protagonists of Argentina’s answer to Dawson’s Creek met their first loves or sang around bonfires.

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