Uruguay: drinking water for 355 rural schools and villages

In the presence of President José Mujica, Spanish ambassador Aurora Díaz-Rato and singer Jorge Drexler, a US$ 6.85 million grant agreement was signed for a four-year program that will improve water and sanitation at 355 rural schools, improving access to water for 24,000 people.

Left to right: Pres. José Mujica, Carlos Colacce (OSE), Jorge Drexler

The grant for the “Small Rural Communities Water Supply Program” comes from the Spanish Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation in Latin America and the Caribbean. The government of Uruguay will provide an additional US$ 6.85 million for the programme administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and executed by the state-owned utility OSE.

The program focuses on rural schools, which play a key role in social integration and are at the centre of community initiatives. OSE has already started the program in 37 localities, each with an average of 20 houses. OSE charges a “social” tariff of 53 pesos (US$ 2.60) for up to 15 cubic metres of water.

By focusing on rural schools, the program will help maximize the benefits of installed water supply capacity and introduce education in hygiene and water conservation. It will begin by installing public standpipes and cylindrical water towers common in many rural areas. At a later stage, individual home connections will be implemented.

The program will upgrade schools’ water and sanitation infrastructure and ensure proper management of wastewater.

The grant signing ceremony was the the first official appearance of Jorge Drexler as “Water Ambassador” for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Spanish government appointed the Oscar-winning Uruyguan musician and doctor as goodwill ambassador for the Spanish Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation in Latin America and the Caribbean on World Water Day 2010.

Related web sites:

• IDB – UR-X1007: Water Program for small Rural Communities
• IDB – Spanish Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation in Latin America and the Caribbean
• OSE – Obras Sanitarias del Estado

Source: Portal 180 [in Spanish], 16 Sep 2010 ; OSE, IDB, 30 Jul 2010 ; Portal 180, 22 Mar 2010

Peru: wells sucked dry by British love of asparagus

A study, by the development charity Progressio, has found that industrial production of asparagus in Peru’s Ica valley is depleting the area’s water resources so fast that smaller farmers and local families are finding wells running dry. Water to the main city in the valley is also under threat, it says. It warns that the export of the luxury vegetable, much of it to British supermarkets, is unsustainable in its current form.

The Ica Valley is a desert area in the Andes and one of the driest places on earth. The asparagus beds developed in the last decade require constant irrigation, with the result that the local water table has plummeted since 2002 when extraction overtook replenishment. In some places it has fallen by eight metres each year, one of the fastest rates of aquifer depletion in the world.

Peru earns more than US$ 450 million a year from the trade that has created around 10,000 new jobs in a very poor area. Around 95% of Peru’s asparagus production comes from the Ica valley. The expansion of the asparagus production was made possible thanks to multimillion dollar investments by the World Bank from the late 1990s on. Nevertheless the trade has provoked conflict. When a World Bank executive went to investigate complaints about the water shortages in April 2010 he was shot at.

Progressio is not calling for an end to the asparagus export business, but is asking supermarkets and investors to take responsibility for finding a more balanced solution.

Read the full report by Progressio:
Hepworth, N.D. … [et al/] (2010). Drop by drop : understanding the impacts of the UK’s water footprint through a case study of Peruvian asparagus. London, UK, Progressio ; Lima, Peru, Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales (CEPES) ; London, UK, Water Witness. ISBN 978-1-85287-335-6. Download [PDF file]

Read also the press release by Progressio, 15 Sep 2010

Source: Felicity Lawrence, Guardian, 15 Sep 2010

Safe use of wastewater in agriculture offers multiple benefits

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Recycling urban wastewater and using it to grow food crops can help mitigate water scarcity problems and reduce water pollution, but the practice is not being as widely implemented as it should, according to a new UN food and agriculture organization (FAO) report [1]. The FAO has called for governments to increase the amount of treated wastewater being used for irrigation purposes as this will reduce costs for farmers and cities and improved water quality.

The FAO report used case studies from Spain and Mexico to test methodologies for cost-benefit and cost-effective analyses of wastewater reuse projects. The Mexico case studies were drawn from three regions:

• Mexico City & Tula Valley
• Guanajuato City & La Purísima irrigation module
• Durango City & Guadalupe Victoria irrigation module

“The case studies in this report show that safely harnessing wastewater for food production can offer a way to mitigate competition between cities and agriculture for water in regions of growing water scarcity,” said Pasquale Steduto, Deputy Director of FAO’s Land and Water Division. “In the right settings, it can also help to deal with urban wastewater effluent and downstream pollution.”

[1] Winpenny, J. … [et al.] (2010). The wealth of waste : the economics of wastewater use in agriculture. (FAO water reports ; 35). Rome, Italy, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). xv, 129 p. Download full report

Related news:

• Mexico: farmers fear loss of “free fertilizer” when wastewater treatment plant is built, WASH news Latin America and Caribbean, 02 Aug 2010
• World Water Week: Urbanization, Irrigation, Global Food Security (medicalnewstoday.com)

Source: FAO, 06 Sep 2010