Managua for cities and towns who tend to be considerably further from the main highway roads. Nicaraguan bus companies, often referred to as "Chicken Buses", serve both urban and rural areas to remedy the lack of sufficient infrastructure that plagues these towns or villages. Transportation infrastructure has grown outside of Managua and other Pacific coast cities and departments in recent years. A road from the river port city of El Rama to Pearl Lagoon, located in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, was completed in 2007. El Rama is connected by highway to Managua. Managua and Puerto Cabezas, located in the
Managua 1927. A new sewer system and the redirecting of waste water to a new waste water treatment plant at Las Mercedes funded by the German government to decontaminate the lake is expected to be the largest in Central America and was inaugurated in 2009. Managua's city area extends about , essentially south from the south shore of Lake Managua. The lakeshore is at an altitude of above sea level, and the city climbs as it gets towards the Sierras de Managua further south where it is over above sea level. Geologically, the city lies on fault lines, thus seismologists predict