Located to the south, in the Amatitlán Lake Basin, the municipality of San Miguel Petapa is the lowest territorial area of the department of Guatemala. Official data account for an area of 24.64 square kilometers; However, the current mayor, Mynor Morales Chávez, clarifies that it measures 38 km2, thanks to an appeal won in the Constitutional Court (CC) recently.
The CEUR analysis indicates that this is a highly populated territory, since the construction of housing in the last 20 years was massive. However, real estate and commercial development projects continue.
In the last four years eight vertical housing projects have been developed: four in 2021 and four in 2023. Within the recent offer is a housing complex of 10 buildings in series, with apartments ranging from 46 to 61 square meters.
A new 58 mly2 apartment in San Miguel Petapa, in an apartment tower, has a price that goes from the Q439 thousand. The houses in condominium, an average of Q540 thousand. The costs vary and rise with single -family homes.
From that account, part of the municipal income has been reflected in private construction licenses, which have been quadrupled. In 2021 they were Q4.6 million, and in 2024, of Q20.4 million.
The most important municipal collection is for the Single Property Tax (IUSI), which went from Q46.7 million in 2021 to Q59.9 million in 2024.
Great change in 1990
Until the mid -twentieth century, San Miguel Petapa, like Santa Catarina Pinula and Villa Canales, were exclusively rural municipalities, and its urban population was practically non -existent.
Its proximity to the capital, 20 kilometers, added to its favorable plains, made it suitable for this rapid growth. The 1950 census registered in San Miguel Petapa 2,146 rural inhabitants and zero urban population. However, in the 1990s it began to grow exponentially. Thus, the 1994 census registered 41,506 inhabitants; of which, 12,949 were identified as urban, according to the South Subregion Book of the Metropolitan Area of Guatemala, of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CEUR) of the University of San Carlos, of the authors Luis Olayo, Ronald Peláez and Jorge Aragón.
In a matter of four decades, San Miguel Petapa went from being a rural municipality to an eminently urban. By 2024, population projections of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) are 154 thousand 729 inhabitants.
Olayo explains that growth in the 1990s was due to a displacement of migrant population that found cheap and accessible land, which took advantage of real estate developers and with it, in the period from 1995 to 2015, the study of the CEUR documented 6,732 licenses for the construction of series housing, 6,317 for single -family homes and only 136 authorizations for multifamily housing.
The above confirms that more than two thirds of the total construction activity were allocated to urban housing. “Today, the territory is saturated. Housing land are scarce, with the consequent mobility problems. Nor is it a place with vertical housing vocation, ”says Olayo.
He adds that this is a municipality, like others, whose main problem is the supply of water services and wastewater treatment, in addition to lacking recreation spaces for young people.
THE GREAT CHALLENGE: Water and drains
As for the sources of water supply, the study of researcher Brayan González, of the CEUR, identifies that in this municipality 7% of the water is superficial and 92% is from underground sources. “The increase in the exploitation of groundwater has been 100% since 2000. This is because 90% of surface waters have pollution problems, due to wastewater discharge,” he explains.
Another study of the CEUR, signed by Luis Olayo, addresses the direct relationship between urban population and wastewater. For example, in 1994 the annual volume of domestic wastewater was 559 thousand 396.8 cubic meters. In 2018 the amount recorded was five million 578 thousand 156.8 cubic meters.
The researcher details that the growing urbanization of San Miguel Petapa consolidates it as a wastewater generating entity of all kinds, among these domestic ones, produced by the inhabitants of massive urban housing built in its territory. These wastewater, mostly without treatment, are transported by the tributaries of the Villalobos river until Lake of Amatitlán (…), where the contamination of 13 municipalities located in this basin falls.
Joint measures
Mayor Mynor Morales Chávez, reelected by the Valor and father party of the mayor of Villa Nueva, Mynor Morales Zurita, states that he focuses on several work fronts to solve the problem of his municipality, from mobility to wastewater treatment plants, and for organic waste focuses on educational programs.
Regarding mobility, it indicates that the Road Impact Regulations were recently approved, which consists of calculating the number of trips of the settlers, to develop mitigation plans that reduce viability problems. In addition, part of the negotiations with the new developers consist of demanding the construction of overpasses or road corridors that mitigate the road step. One of his projects is a bridge that connects Villa Hermosa with Alamos. “Traffic is the most difficult because it does not depend only on us,” he says.
In relation to wastewater management, it states that San Miguel Petapa receives the onslaught of the waters of other municipalities, which lead to the Pinula and Platanitos rivers, without mitigation measures, which causes overflows every winter in the surrounding colonies. “It is necessary to work together with the mayors to align policies to reduce the impact of discharge of these waters that end in the Amatitlán Lake Basin,” he says.