Personal Message from Executive Director, Dylan Terrell
Dear Caminos de Agua supporters,
With our October match campaign kicking off this week, I wanted to bring you up to speed on one of our most important developments.
Before we get into it, I wanted to let you know that when we run our match campaigns, a Caminos de Agua supporter matches each dollar or peso you donate, doubling your impact, this time up to USD $10,000. The sponsors of this campaign have chosen to remain anonymous, but this is the third time they have made this match possible. We are incredibly grateful for their commitment and generosity.
During this match campaign, all donations will be utilized to support a very important and high priority Caminos de Agua development project – our Ground Treatment System, or “GTS.” We have been investing tremendous effort and resources into this system for over five years, and it’s now on the cusp of changing the way we are able to help communities access clean drinking water.
San Miguel de Allende and the surrounding region, representing more than 680,000 people, depend on the Alta Rio Laja aquifer for their water. This water source is seriously at risk, and the problems are only getting worse. A surge of large-scale farming in the region, growing water hungry crops for export, is causing the water table to decline precipitously – as much as 3 meters (over nine feet) per year. As a result, wells are going dry and the available water is becoming increasingly contaminated by arsenic and fluoride, creating extreme health risks for all those who depend upon the aquifer for their water.
Continued consumption of water contaminated with fluoride causes fluorosis that starts as unsightly browning of the teeth and, over time and in higher concentrations, can manifest into crippling skeletal fluorosis – the deformation of the bones. Fluoride is also associated with developmental problems and learning disabilities in children. While arsenic is linked to numerous cancers and a host of other health conditions, it is most closely associated with lesions in the skin, kidney disease, and two specific types of cancer – skin and gallbladder.
We’ve utilized rainwater harvesting as a principal solution to help communities achieve water independence while also avoiding the health threats facing them from these contaminated water supplies. While rainwater harvesting is effective, and we use it extensively, it has limitations. The initial material costs and labor investment to build the systems are proportionally high and there are few benefits of scale.
With this front and center in our minds, one of our major research and development objectives has been to create a “Groundwater Treatment System” (GTS) that will effectively filter out both arsenic and fluoride on a community scale, efficiently and affordably.
Over the last five years, our technology development team has invested more than 20,000 hours – literally working around the clock and sleeping in the lab at critical moments – to bring GTS to life. We’ve partnered very closely with institutions like Engineers Without Borders UK and North Carolina State University. We’ve built, and proven, multiple functional prototypes. We’ve created designs and methods to increase efficiency exponentially, and we even produce our own filtration media for removing fluoride right here in San Miguel de Allende.
We are now taking the next giant leap by installing our first community-scale treatment plant that will go live before the end of 2020 – ultimately producing arsenic and fluoride free drinking water for a rural community. Through this initial pilot system, we expect to achieve proof of concept, conduct a wide range of performance tests, obtain critical learning, make final adjustments, develop our community education programs, and achieve our ultimate goal – the rollout to other communities, initially on a carefully controlled basis but ultimately on a larger scale.
There’s only one problem! We badly need funds in order to coordinate and supervise the pilot system, work with and train our partner community, develop the educational materials, and perform the myriad of internal and external tests necessary. This month, every dollar you donate will be doubled – helping ensure this critically needed advance becomes a reality .
Sincerely,
Dylan Terrell
Executive Director