VICTORIA, El Salvador, July 17 (IPS) – Starting a community water supply project with a solar pumping system was an unexpected idea for a peasant family in a village in El Salvador. But despite their doubts, they made it a reality and now have drinking water in their homes.
In El Rodeo, a small village in Victoria, in the Cabanas department, drinking water is in dire need because the government has not supplied it to this rural community in northern El Salvador. According to official figures, 34 percent of the rural population does not have running water at home.
So the community had to organize itself to supply water from a local spring. But when the El Rodeo board in charge of the project said they would run the pumping system solar-powered to cut costs, there was a collective sense of disappointment.
“When solar energy was mentioned, people’s big dream, the dream of water, disappeared like smoke, they didn’t believe it,” Marixela Ramos, a resident of El Rodeo who saw the project come to fruition when it was conceived as a “dream” between 2005 and 2008, told IPS.
But it was the most viable option for a village devoted to subsistence agriculture at the time.
“Connecting it to the national grid would not be financially sustainable, since there are only a few families living there,” added Ramos, 39, secretary-general of El Rodeo’s board of directors.
Ramos is also involved in other community spaces, primarily women’s rights, hosting a show on Radio Victoria, a station that has been giving voice to the needs of the community for decades.
Despite the disbelief of many villagers, construction began in 2017 and the village’s water system was inaugurated in 2018, benefiting about 80 families, including those from the nearby village of La Marañonera.
El Rodeo’s project is the most innovative and uses solar energy, but other towns in this part of the Cabañas department get their water from their own community initiatives, through so-called Juntas de Agua, or Water Boards. The largest of these is Santa Marta, with about 800 households.
As the government becomes increasingly ineffective in providing services to its 6.7 million residents, other rural communities across the country are doing the same.
There are an estimated 2,500 of these water management agencies in El Salvador, serving 1.6 million people, or 25 percent of the population.
Water for everyone
El Rodeo’s system is fed by a nearby spring known as Agua Caliente. Because it is on private land, the water had to be purchased from the owner for $5,000, funded by an international organization.
From there, the water is redirected to a 28 cubic meter collection tank. A 5 horsepower pump then pumps it up the hill to a distribution tank, from where it is distributed by gravity through pipes to the users.
Each household can use about 10 cubic meters, or 10,000 liters, of water per month, which costs $5.
The roof, which is about 5 meters high, is equipped with 32 solar panels to provide energy to drive the pumping system.
“Before, you had to go to the well and the river to get water. Now it’s easier, you can get water right at home,” Ana Silvia Alemán, 45, told IPS as she washed a jug with water from her home’s tap.
Water service is available two days a week, from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., weather permitting. A distribution tank larger than the current 54 cubic meters would be needed to extend those hours, Amílcar Hernández, in charge of the system’s technical operations, told IPS.
“It’s one of the improvements pending. We estimate we need about a 125 cubic metre tank,” said Hernandez, 26, who works as a corn farmer, performs in a small local theatre group and produces shows for Radio Victoria.
Several Salvadoran and international organizations, including the Washington Ethical Society, the Spanish City Council of Bilbao, Ingeniería Sin Fronteras, and the Rotary Club, participated in the construction of El Rodeo’s water system.
The townspeople offered many hours of labor in return.
In addition to water supply, the project also included other related aspects, such as building composting latrines, which would allow excrement to decompose and produce organic fertilizer without polluting groundwater.
Each house is also designed with a mechanism to filter the grey water by redirecting it into a small underground chamber lined with several layers of sand. The filtered water is then used to irrigate a small vegetable garden or “living garden.”
A place of struggle and hope
El Rodeo’s history is tied to the Salvadoran civil war that took place between 1980 and 1992. After the war, the most important goal for families returning from exile was access to clean drinking water.
El Rodeo is one of several villages in Cabanas and other Salvadoran states where families were forced to flee war in the 1980s, and it was the target of constant military attacks. Several massacres of civilians occurred in the area.
They fled mainly to Mesa Grande, a UN-set up camp for more than 11,000 Salvadoran refugees in Ocotepeque, San Marcos, Honduras.
The civil war left an estimated 70,000 dead and more than 8,000 missing. The conflict ended with a peace agreement in February 1992.
But before the war ended, despite the gunfire and bombing, several families began to return home, and El Refugio was re-inhabited four times: in 1987, 1988, 1999, and finally in March 1992.
“I was born here in El Rodeo, but like everyone else, I had to move to Mesa Grande. We came back to live in peace in our town 32 years ago,” Aleman said, filling a freshly washed water bottle.
A characteristic feature of villages like El Rodeo is the high level of organization, probably learned during the war. Many peasants belonged to the guerrillas, who had a strict way of organizing themselves to carry out common tasks.
The environmental fight against the mining industry that came to the country in the early 2000s began on land in the city of Victoria. Thanks to this pressure, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a law banning metal mining in March 2017.
“Thanks to this level of organization, we can now carry out projects such as water, education, health and security programs,” Fausto Gamez, 33, chairman of the community board, told IPS.
In addition to her role in the water system, Gamez also does community journalism for Radio Victoria and coordinates a gender diversity group in Santa Marta, the region’s largest settlement.
Challenges to overcome
El Rodeo’s water supply system has room for improvement. It is solar-powered, so it can be interrupted when the weather prevents sunlight from heating the panels, especially during the rainy season from May to November.
“Solar power water supply projects have their advantages but also their disadvantages. Sometimes the weather makes it impossible to use water, so we have to rely on the sun,” said Gamez, explaining that this is a recurring complaint.
Technically, the ideal system would be hybrid, meaning it could be connected to the national power grid when needed.
But it would be a huge investment for the community, and the community would not be able to afford it. In addition, families would have to absorb the cost and pay higher monthly fees.
But while service interruptions due to bad weather can be a nuisance, some families weather these multi-day shortages by storing water they have previously stored.
“We try to consume only as much as we need, and we have enough water for two people in our family,” Alemán said.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal Source: Inter Press Service
