Tons of garbage clogging the rivers that traverse San José has caused some quite severe flooding in recent weeks with bridge closures, damage to homes, and landslides plastered in the headlines.

A recent report estimated that in the San José metropolitan area, there are 136 clandestine trash dumps where residents and companies deposit their waste in open air mounds, according to a report on Channel 7 Teletica news.

Heavy rains washes garbage from these lots, and from streets into the fast-moving rivers that rush near residential and business districts.

The San Jose city government said that from January – May, in order to try to clean up as much trash as possible before the rainy season, they spent about 42 million colones (about $73,000) to collect more than 1.5 tons of garbage. And, judging by the amount of trash that continues to flow downstream, their effort seems to have hardly made a dent in the problem.

Over the weekend of September 24-25, more than 5 tons of trash in the Torres River caused the collapse of sewers and flood of streets and homes in Barrio Mexico, a downtown San José neighborhood. And downstream, the Torres caused closures of the Ledezma bridge which connects La Uruca with Pavas/Rohrmoser, causing traffic jams in the highly transited sector.

Fifteen families in Barrio Mexico were forced to evacuate their homes due to the river swells and were housed in a neighborhood church; most lost all of their possessions and do not know if or when they can return to their houses.

Then last week, tons of garbage in the Cucubres river was against found to be the culprit of damage this time in the eastern district of Desamparados, San José where the trash created pressure on a water pipe and caused it to break, leaving 100,000 resident without water for days.