How Bogota is using infrared night-vision cameras to save its ‘toxic’ river

Nearby residents washing, bathing and watering their crops with the river's extremely toxic water are now suffering from a whole host of diseases, reports Genevieve Glatsky in Bogota

(AFP via Getty Images)

At a waste-water treatment plant on the northwest edge of Bogota, Mireya Avila Teuta watches eight screens alternating between rainbow-colored thermal images. 

In an upper right screen, the environmental sanitation technologist spots a man lighting a fire, most likely burning cables to extract the valuable copper inside. As the rubber melts, the open fires spill toxic by-products into the river.

That right there, she points out, is one of the crimes she is on the lookout for.