{"id":357398,"date":"2010-02-24T08:12:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T13:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.circleofblue.org\/waternews\/?p=12235"},"modified":"2010-02-24T08:12:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T13:12:26","slug":"tehuacan-valley-mexico-remains-resilient-as-nation-faces-worst-water-crisis-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/357398","title":{"rendered":"Tehuac\u00e1n Valley, Mexico Remains Resilient as Nation Faces Worst Water Crisis in Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Severe water scarcity is a daily reality for many in Mexico, particularly the people of Tehuac\u00e1n Valley. Facing a dwindling supply compounded by development, drought, and pollution one organization models a solution<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n
Photo \u00a9 J. Carl Ganter\/Circle of Blue<\/div>\n
A boy steps gingerly through the mud after scooping water to use for bathing at his home in a nearby village.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By Andrew Maddocks
\nCircle of Blue<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no water distribution infrastructure in Mexico’s San Marcos Tlacoylaco, and clean freshwater has been scarce as well as prohibitively expensive to buy for decades. But help is on its way to San Marcos, a town of about 10,000 people in the upper Tehuac\u00e1n Valley, because new rainwater storage tanks and sewage-recycling systems in individual homes are making water more accessible to families.<\/p>\n

A Mexican non-profit group, Alternativas, is at the sources of this economic and social change in San Marcos. Alternativas has developed a two-pronged approach aimed at residences and farms that involves water management systems for residences coupled with a campaign to replace corn with amaranth as a staple crop. This ecologically-based water conservation model, tested in San Marcos and 200 other towns, is seen as a potential strategy for solving the uncertain future for all of Tehuac\u00e1n Valley\u2019s increasingly troubled water supply.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a prolonged drought last year that damaged the nation has made water scarcity in Tehuac\u00e1n worse. The already limited supply has also been compromised by population growth, funding shortages and pollution. More people than ever\u2014from every class and background\u2014have lost access to clean water for days at a time. Facets of Mexico\u2019s economy have been severely damaged as its deepest aquifers have been drained.<\/p>\n

\n
DIVINING DESTINY<\/strong><\/div>\n
Four years ago, Circle of Blue produced Divining Destiny<\/a>, which captured the social, political and economic consequences of contaminated water resources in southeast Mexico\u2019s Tehuac\u00e1n Valley.<\/div>\n
Tehuac\u00e1n Slideshow<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

People have moved to cities and now travel along the highways in the valley to look for employment, only to be told they won\u2019t even find water. The water table has dropped so low that no new well permits are available. Swelling urban populations have placed further strain on cities already lacking financial resources.<\/p>\n

Tehuac\u00e1n City\u2014as well as all other cities in Mexico with populations of 50,000 people or more\u2014was required by law to open its first water-treatment plant by 2005. But the plant was too costly to finish, according to Ra\u00fal Hern\u00e1ndez Garciadiego, director general of Alternativas, the Tehuac\u00e1n-based NGO that develops and implements sustainable living practices. Now the city, which has a population of 300,000, is throwing out wastewater that contaminates downstream rather than cleaning and re-using it.<\/p>\n

Alternativas discovered contamination across wide swaths of the valley as the organization looked for a location for their new, larger amaranth factory. Amaranth production is one part of the NGO\u2019s water conservation plan.<\/p>\n

Since indigenous peoples in the Tehuac\u00e1n Valley domesticated corn for the first time in the history of mankind between 5000 and 3400 B.C., maize has become the world\u2019s food staple. But corn requires heavy water use. Amaranth, on the other hand, uses less water and has better nutritional value.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n
Photo \u00a9Brent Stirton\/Reportage by Getty Images<\/div>\n
The dusty village life near San Marcos Tlacoyalco.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Sixteen years ago Alternativas began a growing cooperative called Quali, or quality, to support amaranth production. As a result job opportunities expanded and malnutrition rates in communities decreased due to amaranth. With yields booming, Quali started to look to build a new, larger factory in 2008.
\nTheir search began in the northern part of the Tehuac\u00e1n Valley, near San Marcos.<\/p>\n

But biological waste from industrial chicken farms and chemical pollutants from fabric treatment plants, known as maquiladoras, had contaminated huge areas. Quali members tested every factory site before construction, and found that most were heavily contaminated.<\/p>\n

The group decided to move its new factory down the valley, and began construction on the new facility in 2009.<\/p>\n

Last summer, as the drought cut off critical rainfall in the region and across much of the country, Quali farmers lost 50 percent of their crop. It\u2019s a dramatic loss that Garciadiego still marks as a success, since other farmers in Mexico without irrigation lost 100 percent of their yield.<\/p>\n

Despite the recent drought and long-time pollution, Quali\u2019s annual amaranth yields have increased by an average 35 percent, Garciadiego said.<\/p>\n

But while Quali members could pick an alternative site for their factory, residents in polluted areas of the valley cannot move so easily. After years of living with the contamination, residents have suffered health problems.<\/p>\n

Cervical and breast cancer incidence rates are higher in the Tehuac\u00e1n Valley than most of Mexico. A February 2009 newspaper report in La Jornada de Oriente<\/a> stated that in the Tehuac\u00e1n county four to five new cases of cancer discovered every week in public health clinics.<\/p>\n

Water contaminants and particulate matter in the air are to blame, according to Garciadiego. At times the activist has felt powerless to help. But he found strength in community leaders, like Francisca Rosa Valencia who was a San Marcos native.<\/p>\n

Valencia was a tireless community organizer who pioneered water management and amaranth expansion in the valley for 20 years. In 2007 she fell ill with cervical cancer, dying from the disease just three months later.
\nLosing her was a huge blow to the area\u2019s ecological movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t understand the Lord\u2019s decision to invite her to the sky,\u201d Garciadiego said. \u201cSome of our friends said that perhaps she deserved to see the fruits of her work from a special place. It was a very hard shock for each one of us when she passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the loss, Valencia left behind a legacy of exceptional hard work, water conservation and amaranth expansion that Garciadiego and Alternativas hope to continue.<\/p>\n

In the two years since Valencia died, Alternativas has not only expanded its amaranth production, but also developed parallel waterworks throughout much of southern Mexico\u2019s Mixteca Popoloca region.<\/p>\n

The organization has served more than 200,000 residents in over 200 villages and built 7,500 water works of different sizes as of December.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays people can fulfill the family household need, farm small plots nearby and water their animals, mainly goats,\u201d Garciadiego said.<\/p>\n

People\u2019s crops are healthy and their goats have water dripping down their chins because of Alternativas\u2019 water management system. Their system installs rainwater storage tanks and sewage-recycling systems in every home possible.<\/p>\n

The tank saves enough water during the wet season to sustain each family through the dry season. A biodigester anchors the sewage recycling system that processes family waste and then connects to small garden that acts as a filtering area. Whatever families grow absorbs nutrients from the fertilized ground.<\/p>\n

\"Industrial<\/a><\/p>\n
Photo \u00a9J. Carl Ganter\/Circle of Blue<\/div>\n
Industrial chicken farms dot the landscape of the Tehuacan Valley.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

With the rainwater tanks and biodigesters, Garciadiego said, families have a self-sufficient water supply that costs only as much as the initial equipment installation.<\/p>\n

For centuries townspeople walked vast distances from their squat cinderblock and adobe homes to find water. Recently they\u2019ve depended on erratic pumping from wells, or lost a high percentage of their income buying water in large tanks brought to them on trucks. Now they have a convenient, in-home alternative.<\/p>\n

Alternativas\u2019 model also eliminates the need for reservoirs, piping, sewers and treatment plants\u2014all impossibly expensive, logistical nightmares in these rural towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hydrological approach, drilling, piping, pumping and delivering sewage to water treatment, is so costly that in majority of cases this model of water management is not possible to be set in place,\u201d Garciadiego said.<\/p>\n

Garciadiego hits the \u2018p\u2019s\u2019 of pumping and piping with such rhythmic disdain he might as well be describing pipes made of gold\u2014the concept is that impractical.<\/p>\n

Garciadiego believes his organization\u2019s work in the Mixteca Popoloca region is only the first stage in spreading the ecologically based model to improve water availability, agricultural success and livelihoods across the valley. Alternativas\u2019 model is a new paradigm for water-starved, impoverished areas across Mexico, he said.<\/p>\n

Even with the world\u2019s tenth-largest economy, Mexico does not have the resources to implement Western-style water infrastructure, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we use a sound, ecological approach to management, to household water use, to drip irrigation and water treatment at house level with nothing but initial construction cost,\u201d Garciadiego said, \u201cit will be an ecologically sustainable future for water management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alternativas\u2019 solution could be part of a comprehensive water management plan Mexico is trying to piece together amongst regions with different economic and geographic environments.<\/p>\n

But the national water commission of Mexico, CONAUGA, hasn\u2019t fully embraced Alternativas\u2019 plan. Garciadiego said there is a lack of government understanding, as well as a business imperative to expand Mexico\u2019s traditional infrastructure of reservoirs, pipes and treatment plants.<\/p>\n

Juan Bezaury, Mexico representative for The Nature Conservancy, said that while Alternativas\u2019 model works in poorer isolated areas, Mexico needs piping and infrastructure in major urban centers.<\/p>\n

The civil, but somewhat disconnected, relationship between Alternativas and CONAGUA exemplifies the problem Bezaury sees with water management planning in Mexico\u2014it\u2019s full of multiple disconnected organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still falling far behind. There\u2019s not even an integrated plan to tackle the issue. We have a supply that\u2019s failing, and no clear track to restore the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Juan Bezaury<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still falling far behind,\u201d Bezaury said. \u201cThere\u2019s not even an integrated plan to tackle the issue. We have a supply that\u2019s failing, and no clear track to restore the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the track remains clear in Garciadiego\u2019s mind, at least at the local level. He\u2019s taking his message about a sustainable model that will work across Mexico to foundations and civil organizations this month.<\/p>\n

In November the world\u2019s attention will turn to Mexico in anticipation of the United Nations climate change summit, the first after Copenhagen\u2019s 2009 meeting. As the climate changes droughts will likely become worse, Garciadiego said, and he wants to focus on how increasingly severe water scarcity will affect people. Especially the poor.<\/p>\n

Garciadiego wants to attract some of that international attention towards Alternativas\u2019 model, and bolster ongoing water supply restoration efforts in Tehuac\u00e1n and beyond.<\/p>\n

To Bezaury, Mexico\u2019s water future depends on a unified strategy across the government, non-profit and business worlds the response to Mexico\u2019s water challenges. It must focus on technical demands rather than political gain, in a sector known for corruption and inefficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a supply that\u2019s failing, and no clear track to restore the problem,\u201d Bezaury said. \u201cMoving into elections time I\u2019m not sure what [will] happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Maddocks is a reporter for Circle of Blue. You can reach him at Andrew@circleofblue.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click <\/em>here<\/a> to see Circle of Blue\u2019s package Divining Destiny, and here<\/a> to read public opinion in Mexico on fresh water issues in our WaterViews report. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Divining<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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