Rescuing Swiss Lakes

Switzerland's travel posters and brochures still stress the majestic mountains and many lakes that over the years have lured millions of summer tourists to the tiny nation. Recently, however, there has been a subtle change in what the tourist literature portrays. While the brochures still contain scenes of happy vacationers strolling near or boating on lakes, some of them no longer show swimmers in the water. Reason: some of the most famous Swiss lakes are now badly polluted.

The once bright waters of Lake Lugano, for example, have been contaminated by the daily dumping of untreated human wastes by communities along both the Italian and Swiss shores. This spring all of the beaches on Lake Lugano's opulent Paradise coast were closed to swimmers. As "no swimming" signs became a common sight along the shore, major Paradise hotels rushed to complete huge lakeside pools in time for the summer invasion of tourists. During the season, the lake was empty of swimmers. Even most water skiers, whose wakes once crisscrossed the lake, stayed away.

Thirsty Pachyderms. Evidence of the fouling of Switzerland's once pure waters crops up everywhere. Health authorities in the canton of Aargau recently forbade a circus to allow its elephants to drink from the river Aar; the water was too polluted even for pachyderms, the doctors said. Lake Geneva, whose transparent water and white chalk bottom once moved poets to lyricism, is becoming clouded and dull. Industrial, agricultural and household chemicals-not to mention raw human wastes-drain uninterruptedly into the lake, where they fertilize enormous "blooms" of rust-colored algae. When these plants die, they sink and decompose, depleting oxygen supplies to such an extent that prized deep-swimming fish suffocate. "There are still transparent waters in mountain lakes, but these are too cold for anybody to jump in," mourns the Swiss magazine Eau-Air-Sante (Water-Air-Health). "We are liable to witness the departure of those tourists who are anxious to live in hygienic surroundings, and thus we shall miss the precious foreign currencies."

Spurred by such pragmatic arguments, the Swiss have begun a giant cleanup campaign. They have already gone a long way toward "saving" Lake Zurich by spending $67 million to build three-stage chemical-and sewage-treatment plants in the lake's watershed. As a result, swimming is again permitted everywhere on the lake and, says Dr. Heinz Ambiihl, chief fresh-water expert of Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, "If the water is not more blue, it is at least less brown." Current plans call for the installation of such plants in cities throughout Switzerland at a cost of $2.5 billion-an enormous expense for a nation of 6.2 million inhabitants.

No matter how committed the Swiss are to restoring the beauty and purity of their waters, there is a limit to what they can accomplish by themselves. Geneva, Lugano and many other lakes lie on Switzerland's borders with France and Italy, which have so far shown little concern about the wastes they spew into the mountain waters.

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