Rapel reservoir is an eutrophic system in Chile that has undergone a series of anthropogenic impacts in recent decades. To provide a better understanding of the processes occurring in the reservoir, we examined bacterial composition from surface sediments using traditional microbiology techniques and molecular biology tools. Our results showed significant temporal variation in the physical and chemical composition of the water column, but no depth-related differences during the study period. To detect temporal changes in bacterial composition, cultivable heterotrophic bacteria, heterotrophic iron oxidizing bacteria, and sulfate-reducing bacteria were extracted from the surface sediments and their concentration measured. Microbial diversity in sediments was represented by closest relatives of eight different bacterial phyla. The most frequently recovered phylotypes in the clone library of 16S rDNA were related to sulfate-reducing bacteria belong to the Deltaproteobacteria group