What’s the role of government in our water crisis?
Photo: community members from the Municipality of San Diego de la Unión installing a Rainwater Harvesting System.
What Happens when the Government Stops Hiding from the Problem?
How the Multifaceted Collaboration in San Diego de la Unión is Driving Lasting Change
Nestled just a little over an hour north of San Miguel de Allende, lies San Diego de la Unión, a small municipality with a population of about 40,000 people stretched across more than 90 rural communities, and some of the most severe water scarcity and contamination issues in our watershed. You might not believe it at first, given the lush green that abounds throughout much of the municipality – courtesy of a booming agricultural industry. However, beneath this facade lies a harsh reality of extreme water inequality, mirroring the challenges faced by numerous communities across our watershed. The relentless exploitation of our aquifer by the burgeoning agro-industrial sector has triggered a dire water and health crisis in San Diego de la Unión. Surface water sources are alarmingly scarce and extracting groundwater has become increasingly arduous as the water table drops. Even those fortunate enough to be connected to a well endure meager access, often limited to just a few hours one or two days a week. Tragically, many communities are deprived of such access altogether. Compounding this predicament, the majority of the communities in San Diego suffer from severe water contamination, with elevated and unhealthy levels of arsenic and fluoride tainting their water supply, many times above the allowable limits.
Photo: community members from different rural communities belonging to the Municipality of San Diego de la Unión pose for a picture after a technical training on Rainwater Harvesting provided by Caminos de Agua.
Photo: Saúl Juárez, Community Projects Coordinator at Caminos de Agua, explaining the use of Caminos' Aguadapt water ceramic filter to a group of members of our joint Rainwater Harvesting Program in the Municipality of San Diego de la Unión.
Since 2012, we have been actively engaged in the Municipality of San Diego de la Unión, seeking to comprehend and document the full extent of their water crisis and develop sustainable solutions. This collaborative journey began through the unwavering efforts of Carmen Castro, the Community Leader of SECOPA (“Pozo Ademado Community Services” for its acronym in Spanish), a grassroots organization based in the rural community of Pozo Ademado within the municipality of San Diego. Pozo Ademado itself only receives water one day a week, and it is contaminated with fluoride at nearly 4 times above the maximum allowable limit. More than a decade ago, SECOPA and Caminos de Agua began working together, hand in hand, to confront these challenges head-on through water quality monitoring, educational programing, and the construction of rainwater harvesting systems.
Photo: Community members from the municipality of San Diego de la Unión building a Rainwater Harvesting System.
Years later, in 2018, we embarked on a collaborative journey with Juan Carlos Castillo Cantero, the forward-thinking Municipal President (Mayor) of San Diego de la Unión at the time. Starting with a municipality-wide water quality study, our collaboration with President Castillo has since played a pivotal role in establishing clean water access in the municipality through the widespread implementation of Rainwater Harvesting Systems.
This transformative journey continues today on an unprecedented scale. With President Castillo's re-election as Municipal President in 2021, his unwavering focus on water issues have propelled our regional water challenges to the forefront of his administration's agenda. Together with SECOPA, Caminos de Agua, the Clean Water for Life Initiative (a group of individual supporters we featured in last week’s email) and Rotoplas (a renowned water storage company and crucial corporate partner) we have already built more than 230 Rainwater Harvesting Systems, are in the process of building 110 more this year, and have plans to build hundreds more in San Diego de la Unión, across dozens of communities, before President Castillo’s term is up in 2024.
Together, we have also tested the water supply of every community in the municipality and worked hard to educate the public on our regional water crisis, facilitated workshops on rainwater harvesting, and fostered collaboration among different communities grappling with similar issues and implementing similar solutions across our watershed. Our joint Rainwater Harvesting Program is proof positive of what can happen when a governmental administration decides to no longer ignore the harsh reality of our water crisis, but instead, faces the challenges head on by identifying the problems and collaborating to find solutions. In the words of President Castillo:
"Our collaboration with Caminos de Agua has been truly transformative for us... Now, we are able to capture rainwater and provide people with a reliable source of healthy drinking water, delivering numerous benefits to the families of San Diego de la Unión."
– Juan Carlos Castillo Cantero Municipal President of
San Diego de la Unión
Regrettably, many municipalities within our watershed, and throughout the country, face the same adverse conditions as San Diego de la Unión, yet very few are even willing to admit there is a problem due to the political ramifications, much less take any sort of real action to address these shared problems. Resolving our water crisis demands cooperation and leadership from stakeholders across sectors, but especially from local politicians, and the courage of the President Castillo’s of the world, to go against the grain and at the risk of their own political livelihood, must be celebrated.