With Our Partners, We Can Rise to this Immense Challenge

Water scarcity and contamination are considerable challenges in the Upper Rió Laja Aquifer – the main water source for 680,000 people throughout Northern Guanajuato. The water table is declining by 2-3 meters (~6-7 feet) per year, some of the most overexploited groundwater across the globe. This forces wells to be drilled much deeper, and the deeper we go in order to reach this vital resource, the more our water is contaminated with increasingly toxic levels of arsenic and fluoride – two incredibly dangerous chemicals that are naturally found in the deeper parts of our aquifer. Arsenic and fluoride, if consumed regularly, are linked to irreversible conditions like skeletal and dental fluorosis, cognitive and developmental impairments in children, chronic kidney disease, and different types of cancers.

Over a decade ago, when Caminos de Agua was just beginning to collaborate to understand these issues, with several Mexican and international universities, and in partnership with local grassroots organizations, we began our Water Quality Monitoring Program – our first program that continues to this day with the goal of documenting and mapping the changing arsenic and fluoride contamination conditions plaguing our region. In 2013, dozens of communities, organizations, and hundreds of people came together in a massive collaborative effort to present the results of those first studies, along with the testimonies of those most impacted, in front of the Permanent People’s Tribunal – an international human rights ethical body, which stated:

"Given the seriousness of the cases reported regarding overexploitation and contamination of surface and groundwater, and its impact on people and ecosystems, it is recommended that the Mexican government...declare [the entire Upper Río Laja Watershed region] an emergency zone due to the environmental and health risks."

Photo: Permanent People's Tribunal in 2013 general meeting.

Today, we continue to monitor the increasingly worsening water quality situation in our region with diverse partners like municipal governments, universities like Texas A&M and the University of Guanajuato, and community partners. We have also expanded beyond the boundaries of our watershed to better understand the growing water contamination throughout the country. INCA (the National Water Quality Inventory for its acronym in Spanish) is a national network of academics and other organizations collaborating to uncover the arsenic and fluoride throughout the country. Together, we have helped make federal water quality data public, which has shown us that upwards of 21 million people throughout Mexico are exposed to excessive levels of arsenic and/or fluoride in their water supply, with few appropriate solutions available.

Photo: This interactive map is the culmination of years of water quality testing regional and water advocacy nationally. We are extremely thankful for our collaborators including Texas A&M University, University of Guanajuato, Kansas State University, Northern Illinois University, as well as the work of the National Water Quality Inventory (INCA) who helped make the Federal water quality data available.

To make an impact on those most affected by these issues, for years we have partnered with grassroots organizations like CUVAPAS, SECOPA, and the San Cayetano Community Center – three of our longest and most important collaborators – to implement extensive education, rainwater harvesting, water treatment,and sanitation projects throughout the region. This collaboration was highlighted, through the lens of our partner Father Juan Carlos Zesati, in 2016, which brought international attention to these issues that were, up to that point, largely ignored by many local and national authorities (read the article here).

Photos: Community partners come together to work on, and celebrate, the construction of new rainwater harvesting systems. 

A lot has changed since 2016, and the success of these collaborative programs has leveraged the interest of new important institutional stakeholders and brought them to the table. Today, we are working directly with large Foundations like Gonzalo Río Arronte, Alstom, and PlanetBuyback, private corporations, particularly Rotoplas, and even governments like the municipality San Diego de la Unión, to substantially increase the scope of these programs – together expanding clean water and sanitation solutions to more than 35 additional communities over the next two years.

Photo: Caminos, SECOPA, Rotoplas, and the Mayor of San Diego de la Union developing a large-scale rainwater harvesting program.

The complexity of our regional water problems have also required the development of new technologies. For more than 10 years, we have regularly partnered with international NGOs like Engineers Without Borders and leading researchers, innovators, and universities like NC State, Imperial College of London, UNAM San Luis Potosi, and many more. Together, our in house Tech Team and satellite network of world-class technical advisors, have been partnering to develop pioneering technologies – like our Groundwater Treatment System, which removes arsenic and fluoride at the community level – to help us vastly increase our scope and reach in the fight for clean water in communities disproportionately affected by the new water quality and scarcity challenges we face today.