The Upper Rio Laja Watershed
A Region Connected by a Common and Overexploited Aquifer
Part 4
Our Response
Over the past eleven years, Caminos de Agua has developed a variety of interventions and solutions to confront a complex and multifaceted water crisis that continues to worsen. Affecting most of Northern Guanajuato, our regional water crisis touches seven municipalities in an area of more than 6,800 square kilometers – larger than the size of the State of Delaware in the US – with more than 700,000 people living in it. Additionally, 20 other states throughout the country, impacting over 21 million people, face similar challenges with limited resources and solutions available. To attack the scope and intricacies of our crisis, we have carefully assembled a wide network of collaborators, technological developments, data collection, awareness building efforts, and constantly adapting them to tackle our evolving situation.
The consequences of not acting in compliance with international water and land management standards has had very visible and serious effects on this region, causing the water table to free-fall at the alarming rate of ~6-10 feet (2-3 meters) a year and causing both an environmental and public health crisis. The more the water table falls, the deeper we have to dig wells in order to extract water. Unfortunately, at these depths, water has a high concentration of arsenic and fluoride, two extremely toxic chemicals that are related to a host of health effects such as arsenicosis, chronic kidney disease, dental and skeletal fluorosis (teeth become permanently stained and bones become brittle), skin lesions, learning and developmental impairments in children, and several types of cancers.
To get our arms around these issues, we at Caminos de Agua launched our Water Monitoring Program over a decade ago in collaboration with grassroots organizations and other local and international actors such as Northern Illinois University, the University of Guanajuato, Texas A&M University, and many others. Over the years, we tested hundreds of sites and made public the water quality challenges facing this region, which were ignored and, in some cases, actively hidden previously. We were also a part of a national network, which pushed the Federal Water Commision (CONAGUA) to make thousands of data points public, uncovering arsenic and fluoride contamination across the country – directly impacting millions.
Photo: Álvaro, Water Quality Coordinator at Caminos, taking a water sample at a local reservoir.
We then began implementing actionable solutions. Realizing the difficulty of removing arsenic and fluoride, we developed our Rainwater Harvesting Program as rain is naturally-free of arsenic, fluoride, and other potential chemicals. However, in our region, rain has to be stored for up to 8 months and is at risk for biological pathogens and thus needs to be filtered or treated prior to being safely consumed. Our Rainwater Harvesting Systems contain two pretreatment steps and a final, and critical, ceramic water filter as the final treatment step to make the water safe for consumption.
To date, we have created hundreds of millions of liters of clean water access through our Rainwater Harvesting Program and in direct partnership with the communities we seek to impact, providing thousands of people in our region with a lifetime access to safe drinking water.
“Building rainwater harvesting systems takes a lot of time and effort, but it is thanks to this time and effort that we can live and enjoy a healthy life. So, let’s invest our time wisely to help ourselves and others.”
– Gudelia Trejo from the community of Pozo Ademado
Photo: A mother and her children in front of a newly installed Rainwater Harvesting System.
That ceramic filter used in our rainwater programs is produced in-house here at Caminos de Agua and certified by the Mexican government. Recently, we redesigned the filter as our new Aguadapt water filter. This award-winning technology, internally developed by our Research and Development Team, is now being distributed throughout Mexico as far as Chiapas, Oaxaca, and even Puerto Rico and Haiti, providing safe drinking water to tens of thousands more people.
Photo: Caminos' Aguadapt ceramic filter.
Unfortunately, we cannot meet the demand through rainwater alone. The construction of rainwater systems requires a heavy upfront investment with one rainwater system providing water for only 1-2 families, whereas other solutions, such as our Groundwater Treatment System, can serve up to 40 families for a similar cost as one Rainwater Harvesting System.
For more than six years, we have been developing our Groundwater Treatment System (GTS) – a water technology capable of removing both arsenic and fluoride at the community scale for a fraction of the initial cost of installing rainwater harvesting systems. Our first GTS prototype is already installed in the community of Los Ricos, providing upwards of 40 families safe drinking water, and utilizes our unique approach to community engagement and education, in which community members are making the decisions and leading the process from day one – something we believe is paramount to the long-term sustainability and impact of any social project. Ana Torres, Community Organizer with Caminos de Agua, describes this process:
“In each of these processes, at every step, the group of families who were going to participate and be co-creators of this technology [GTS], established their own agreements and ways of sustaining the technology…
If we had just arrived with technical workshops… this project would never have worked. It works because there has been a process, first of identifying, creating awareness, and then guiding [the families of Los Ricos] to be the owners of the process.”
This first GTS is now maintained and operated by the capable hands of a group of women from the community of Los Ricos itself, who oversee the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the system. María del Rosario, a mother from Los Ricos, water advocate, and one of the original members of the GTS committee, had the following to say:
“We had many years without safe drinking water. While taking care of the GTS is hard work, it’s changed the reality of my family and community.”
Photo: María del Rosario (on the far right) explaining to some representatives of the State Water Commission of Guanajuato how the GTS functions.
Winning first prize of the 2022 RELX Environmental Challenge, GTS is now a proven technology – supported by a successful implementation methodology – that we are actively expanding to more communities in our region. We are also actively working with the State Water Commission of Guanajuato and other important stakeholders to transform the GTS model into one that can be replicated and scaled to the millions of others impacted by these water quality challenges in Mexico, and around the globe, in the years to come.
Next week, in part 5 and the last of our series, we’ll explore with you our vision of the future of our work on water issues. If you haven’t already, please read the last installments by clicking on the following links: part 1, part 2, part 3. Thank you!
