Smoke from burning garbage blankets Cocle communities

(thepanamanews.com) The Panama News, like other news media in Panama, has been receiving increasingly desperate pleas from people who live in, do business at or visit the beach communities near the old Rio Hato airstrip. The city of Anton and a number of other communities dump their garbage in the area, and notwithstanding environmental laws to the contrary, set it on fire. There have been promises of solutions, some of them controversial in their own right, but it seems that no immediate relief is at hand and a lot of the affected people believe that their complaints are falling on deaf ears. Some of the things that people have been saying: "The burning of plastic and trash is so bad we cannot breathe. Many guests left the resort. Two real estate agents brought clients to Playa Blanca and the clients told them to turn around: they would not live in a place like this."   "Huge truckloads of trash are hauled in from outside this area --- we watch them come from the highway every day, not the resorts!"