The Municipality of Talcahuano, due to its geographic location, natural conditions and closeness to energy supply centres, such as coal from Lota and Coronel, had from the 50´s an important economic growth, a greater military presence, and an increased port capacity; all this led to an accelerated urban growth. The co-existence of active urban and industrial areas in an uneven territory, with abundant water bodies and a surface area of only 142.8 km2, have made the city specially sensitive to natural resource degradation. A situation was made critical and gave rise to the municipal strategy started in 1993. This situation was being aggravated by the chronic scarcity of resources in the Municipality and the lack of infrastructure and control mechanisms faced with environmental deterioration.
The Municipality, as the institution in charge of administering this serious environmental deterioration that affected the quality of life of its inhabitants, in co-ordination with other public, private and community organisations, manifest their outmost commitment and concern for decreasing water contamination. A program to appropriately zone the city in order to harmonise the different activities was implemented.
The Spanish version.
