Part 1: The Causes
“Day zero” refers to the day when a city, or region, has essentially run out of water. This has already happened in places like Cape Town, South Africa and even in cities of Mexico, like Monterrey, as recently as last year – a metropolitan region of almost 6 million people. Day zero, however, has been a reality for thousands of people in rural communities, right here in our watershed for years. Such is the case of Pozo Ademado, a rural community an hour and half north of San Miguel de Allende. This community only gets water once a week, on Mondays to be exact, when they must collect and store enough water to last the entire week. Even worse, the water they do receive is extremely contaminated, exceeding the Mexican norms for fluoride by nearly 4 times, and thus not safe for human consumption.
At Caminos we first came to this community thanks to Carmen Castro, community leader, water activist, and co-founder of SECOPA (Community Services of Pozo Ademado) a health and holistic center located at the heart of Pozo Ademado and one of our longest and earliest grassroots community partners. Carmen has been working tirelessly to protect the health of her neighbors, and even neighboring communities, for decades. Over the past decade, water has become more and more critical as the agricultural industry continues to expand and water becomes more scarce, and more contaminated. The health effects are too apparent to ignore.
Photo: Carmen Castro Mata, leader of SECOPA, a long-time collaborator of Caminos de Agua at a recent inauguration event for newly built Rainwater Harvesting Systems.
On the drive to arrive at Pozo Ademado, one is ironically surrounded by green. Industrial agricultural fields encircle you on all sides, with modern irrigation systems as you continue to drive between greenhouses that stretch on for miles. The neighboring arid region, where Pozo Ademado sits, with its incredibly limited water access, seems almost foreign being placed in the middle of these fields. But what is actually foreign is the expansion of these agroindustrial interests that otherwise have no connection to these communities nor to the water or land they unapologetically overexploit. For context, each year, our aquifer falls at an absolutely alarming rate of 2-3 meters (~6-10 feet), some of the most over-extracted groundwater in the world, with more than 85% going to agricultural production while communities like Pozo Ademado continue to dry up.
Only through the work of people like Carmen, Caminos de Agua, and our joint allies, have we been able to create enough awareness for people to start looking for solutions, creating partnerships that go from the local volunteer work of people like Gudelia Sánchez, who have gone from beneficiaries to water advocates, educators, and organizers of their own community and beyond. These partnerships have allowed for us to leverage donors, huge foundations like Gonzalo Río Arronte, corporations such as Rotoplas, and Municipal Governments like San Diego de la Unión, to coalesce in the fight against water scarcity and water contamination – thus expanding the meaning of community by understanding that we share one common water resource: the Upper Rio Laja Watershed and its aquifer system.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Series next week, where we delve into the Impacts of our water crisis.