Laguna Papensen

On the shore of the Gulf of San Jorge, between the hills and the sea, there is a lagoon that hardly anyone looks at twice. It is called Laguna Papensen. Its water is salty and shallow.

This coast was Tehuelche land long before the streets and houses arrived. Today the lagoon sits beside the town's neighbourhoods, and life keeps finding its way to it.

Come close with a little patience and you will see it. In the past it was easy to spot crested ducks, yellow-billed teals, red shovelers and Chiloé wigeons, flying steamer ducks, red-gartered coots, southern lapwings, rufous-collared sparrows, swallows or burrowing owls, among others. All of them found here a place to stop. That is why it deserves a name people remember.

Laguna Papensen is sick. Rain washes in whatever it finds on its way, and the lagoon has received diverted sewage.

The damage goes back a long way. The town's treatment plant is more than fifteen years old and close to the limit of its capacity. An expansion was planned in 2015 and never built. In 2017 the lagoon rose so high that it flooded the plant, and in 2019 a water emergency had to be declared so the surplus could be drained.

When it is hot, the water runs out of oxygen. In February 2021 it turned pink with a bacterial bloom, and the smell led the province to take samples. In January 2026, with the water level lower, the stench came back for days and the wind carried it to people's homes.

Work to expand the plant began in September 2025. The plan to clean up the lagoon, put forward by a group of councillors in October 2026, has still not been approved and has no date. Its author sums it up in one sentence: what is missing is political will.