Earlier this spring, water issues were clearly in evidence from a casual glance through Colorado papers.
There was the tainted water supply in Alamosa which occasioned a cleansing of the entire system, ongoing debate over whether to build a new reservoir to serve expected population growth along the Front Range, and, nationally, the finding of traces of prescription drugs in the water of municipalities across the country.
My water issues education took a quantum leap forward, however, when I spent a week in rural Honduras under the auspices of the Denver-based nonprofit Water for People, the international arm of the American Water Works Association.
Along with several other US volunteers and the Honduran staff of Water for People, I helped gather information on success of past projects with an eye toward guiding development of future ones.
Seeing firsthand the disparity between what we take for granted here and the trying conditions endured by millions living less than a two hour plane ride from Houston was truly sobering and for some members of our group clearly transformational.
Our team of 11 went to nearly two dozen villages spanning terrain from coastal plain to mountains. In each village we spoke with the members of the local water committees, checked on the state of gravity fed water systems and their chlorination mechanisms, and conducted household interviews and visual inspections of tap facilities and latrines.
We were greeted with great friendliness at every place we stopped. Water for People’s extraordinary country coordinator, Diana Betancourt, allowed us to see through her eyes the challenges and the triumphs experienced daily by NGOs, government agencies and the many faith based missions working in Latin America.
Her knowledge of and affection for the villagers and their circumstances greatly eased our job and made it highly educational as well.
Honduras is one of the hemisphere’s poorest nations with a per capita income of slightly more than $1,000 annually. Ten percent of its 7,000,000 citizens do not have access to healthy, potable water or minimal sanitation systems, the majority of them at the end of dizzyingly steep unpaved roads high in the mountains. Effects are still being felt in some places from the devastating Hurricane Mitch of 1998.
Thanks to organizations such as Water for People, village by village the situation is being ameliorated. With a significant rise in its country budget in the last several years, Water for People has multiplied its reach and is poised to begin new operations in Nicaragua as part of an overall expansion in Latin America with Sra. Betancourt becoming the regional director.
The Water for People model puts a premium on local buy-in from the communities targeted for services as villagers supply the labor to stretch the water line from the selected water source which can be a distance of 10 kilometers or more over rugged terrain.
Using U.S. volunteers to monitor existing efforts and to do preliminary groundwork on new commitments allows the organization to deliver its services in a highly cost-effective manner.
All the water systems we saw were functional to the great contentment of the villagers although chlorination did not always receive their top priority.
One campesino and water board member explained to me that chlorination, if in water used to wash the coffee crop, imparted a bad taste which affected the caliber of the product delivered to the cooperative in town.
Still, clearly, the hemispheric need for basics such as water systems far outstrips the ability of development organizations to provide them.
In the view of Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, addressing this need with funds from the developed world is an admirable environmental and health goal that will have as profound an effect on transforming the Honduran and other economies as prioritizing global warming.
In Denver we are fortunate to have Water for People on our doorstep. This past month it increased its local visibility by sponsoring a contest on water issues amongst several DPS middle schools, a program it intends to grow in the future.
As a community we would do well to embrace its unassuming yet unyielding commitment to deliver this vital resource, to help it continue to leverage precious dollars into better health and sanitation for our hemispheric neighbors and friends.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
