Eliminate, Ignore or Integrate Urban Rivers? Challenges and Opportunities for the River Huatanay (Cusco, Peru)

The river Huatanay, located more than 3000 m above sea level, is one of Peru’s most polluted rivers. Moreover, for most of its approximately 30-km length, the river is urbanized, as it runs through Cusco, a city of more than 400,000 inhabitants. In this chapter, we seek to highlight the transformations, both historical and recent, that have led to the river’s current condition and stress the part played in this by the failure to implement territorial planning resolutions and to adopt instruments of water management that might promote the river’s sustainability. Although a number of promising initiatives were taken, especially during the last third of the twentieth century, which saved the Huatanay channel from elimination, the current state of the river is critical: its water quality is deplorable, and there are no projects on the table to seek its urban integration. Certain stretches of the river have been channelized, but this work has been constrained by the city’s express ways, and the Huatanay finds itself relegated to playing a secondary role in Cusco’s urban fabric. In the second part of this chapter, we identify a number of important questions that might serve as the basis for a river recovery strategy to be implemented by Cusco’s public authorities.