In February, 26 communities were under boil water advisories — some for over 10 years

-published on March 8, 2016

The deplorable state of drinking water on many First Nations reserves in B.C. is well documented.

At the end of February 2016, 26 communities in B.C. were under boil water advisories — some of them dating back 10 years.

“The issue and the challenge is that even though that water comes from pristine sources, some of those sources are susceptible to microbial contamination,” UBC engineering professor Madjid Mohseni told On The Coast host Stephen Quinn.

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“Those communities are often very remote … much of the funding needs to be paid by the ratepayers or the users, and when you have only tens of people living there, it’s very difficult for them to afford installing a treatment system.”

​Mohseni is a co-founder of RES’EAU-WaterNET, a program that works directly with small communities to find solutions for access to water.

His work focuses on working with communities, identifying their concerns and finding local human capacity for water treatment.

He and his students try to present various water treatment options to the communities to see which ones would work best given their human and financial capacity.

“‘One solution fits all’ does not work,” he said. “Depending on what is in the water, the type of treatment that is required would be different.”

Mohseni will be presenting on his work March 9 as part of the UBC Centennial Emerging Research Workshop on Water.

by Courtney Parker, originally February 2, 2016

Recent media coverage and spiraling public outrage over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has completely eclipsed the ongoing environmental justice struggles of the Navajo. Even worse, the media continues to frame the situation in Flint as some sort of isolated incident. It is not. Rather, it is symptomatic of a much wider and deeper problem of environmental racism in the United States.

The history of uranium mining on Navajo (Diné) land is forever intertwined with the history of the military industrial complex. In 2002, the American Journal of Public Health ran an article entitled, ‘The History of Uranium Mining and the Navajo People’. Head investigators for the piece, Brugge and Gobel, framed the issue as a “tradeoff between national security and the environmental health of workers and communities.” The national history of mining for uranium ore originated in the late 1940’s when the United States decided that it was time to cut away its dependence on imported uranium. Over the next 40 years, some 4 million tons of uranium ore would be extracted from the Navajo’s territory, most of it fueling the Cold War nuclear arm’s race.

Situated by colonialist policies on the very margins of U.S. society, the Navajo didn’t have much choice but to seek work in the mines that started to appear following the discovery of uranium deposits on their territory. Over the years, more than 1300 uranium mines were established. When the Cold War came to an end, the mines were abandoned; but the Navajo’s struggle had just begun.

Back then, few Navajo spoke enough English to be informed about the inherent dangers of uranium exposure. The book, ‘Memories Come to Us in the Rain and the Wind: Oral Histories and Photographs of Navajo Uranium Miners and Their Families’, explains how the Navajo had no word for ‘radiation’ and were cut off from more general public knowledge through language and educational barriers, and geography.

The Navajo began receiving federal healthcare during their confinement at Bosque Redondo in 1863. The Treaty of 1868 between the Navajos and the U.S. government was made in the good faith that the government – more specifically, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) – would take some responsibility in protecting the health of the Navajo nation. Instead, as noted in ‘White Man’s Medicine: The Navajo and Government Doctors, 1863-1955’, those pioneering the spirit of western medicine spent more time displacing traditional Navajo healers and knowledge banks, and much less time protecting Navajo public health. This obtuse, and ultimately short-sighted, attitude of disrespect towards Navajo healers began to shift in the late 1930’s; yet significant damage had already been done.

Founding director of the environmental cancer section of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Wilhelm C. Hueper, published a report in 1942 that tied radon gas exposure to higher incidence rates of lung cancer. He was careful to eliminate other occupational variables (like exposure to other toxins on the job) and potentially confounding, non-occupational variables (like smoking). After the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was made aware of his findings, Hueper was prohibited from speaking in public about his research; and he was reportedly even barred from traveling west of the Mississippi – lest he leak any information to at-risk populations like the Navajo.

In 1950, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) began to study the relationship between the toxins from uranium mining and lung cancer; however, they failed to properly disseminate their findings to the Navajo population. They also failed to properly acquire informed consent from the Navajos involved in the studies, which would have required informing them of previously identified and/or suspected health risks associated with working in or living near the mines. In 1955, the federal responsibility and role in Navajo healthcare was transferred from the BIA to the USPHS.

In the 1960’s, as the incidence rates of lung cancer began to climb, Navajos began to organize. A group of Navajo widows gathered together to discuss the deaths of their miner husbands; this grew into a movement steeped in science and politics that eventually brought about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1999.

Cut to the present day. According to the US EPA, more than 500 of the existing 1300 abandoned uranium mines (AUM) on Navajo lands exhibit elevated levels of radiation.

The Los Angeles Times gave us a sense of the risk in 1986. Thomas Payne, an environmental health officer from Indian Health Services, accompanied by a National Park Service ranger, took water samples from 48 sites in Navajo territory. The group of samples showed uranium levels in wells as high as 139 picocuries per liter. Levels In abandoned pits were far more dangerous, sometimes exceeding 4,000 picocuries. The EPA limit for safe drinking water is 20 picocuries per liter.

This unresolved plague of radiation is compounded by pollution from coal mines and a coal-fired power plant that manifests at an even more systemic level; the entire Navajo water supply is currently tainted with industry toxins.

Recent media coverage and spiraling public outrage over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has completely eclipsed the ongoing environmental justice struggles of the Navajo. Even worse, the media continues to frame the situation in Flint as some sort of isolated incident.

Madeline Stano, attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, assessed the situation for the San Diego Free Press, commenting, “Unfortunately, Flint’s water scandal is a symptom of a much larger disease. It’s far from an isolated incidence, in the history of Michigan itself and in the country writ large.”

Other instances of criminally negligent environmental pollution in the United States include the 50-year legacy of PCB contamination at the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (HNR) situated in the Yakama Nation’s “front yard“.

While many environmental movements are fighting to establish proper regulation of pollutants at state, federal, and even international levels, these four cases are representative of a pervasive, environmental racism that stacks up against communities like the Navajo and prevents them from receiving equal protection under existing regulations and policies.

Despite the common thread among these cases, the wave of righteous indignation over the ongoing tragedy in Flint has yet to reach the Navajo Nation, the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, the Yakama Nation – or the many other Indigenous communities across the United States that continue to endure various toxic legacies in relative silence.

Current public outcry may be a harbinger, however, of an environmental justice movement ready to galvanize itself towards a higher calling, one that includes all peoples across the United States, and truly shares the ongoing, collective environmental victories with all communities of color.

by Justin Gardner, originally posted on January 31, 2016

The news out of Flint, Michigan brought the issue of contaminated drinking water into sharp focus, as it was revealed that officials at every level—local, state and federal—knew about lead-poisoned water for months but did nothing to address the problem.

In the western U.S., water contamination has been a way of life for many tribes. The advocacy group Clean Up The Mines! describes the situation in Navajo country, which is far worse than in Flint, Michigan.

Since the 1950s, their water has been poisoned by uranium mining to fuel the nuclear industry and the making of atomic bombs for the U.S. military. Coal mining and coal-fired power plants have added to the mix. The latest assault on Navajo water was carried out by the massive toxic spills into the Animas and San Juan rivers when the EPA recklessly attempted to address the abandoned Gold King mine.

“In 2015 the Gold King Mine spill was a wake-up call to address dangers of abandoned mines, but there are currently more than 15,000 toxic uranium mines that remain abandoned throughout the US,” said Charmaine White Face from the South Dakota based organization Defenders of the Black Hills. “For more than 50 years, many of these hazardous sites have been contaminating the land, air, water, and national monuments such as Mt. Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. Each one of these thousands of abandoned uranium mines is a potential Gold King mine disaster with the greater added threat of radioactive pollution. For the sake of our health, air, land, and water, we can’t let that happen.”

There is no comprehensive law requiring cleanup of abandoned uranium mines, meaning corporations and government can walk away from them after exploiting their resources. 75 percent of abandoned uranium mines are on federal and Tribal lands.

Leona Morgan of Diné No Nukes points out one example: “The United Nuclear Corporation mill tailings spill of 1979, north of Churchrock, New Mexico left an immense amount of radioactive contamination that down-streamers, today, are currently receiving in their drinking water. A mostly-Navajo community in Sanders, Arizona has been exposed to twice the legal limit allowable for uranium through their tap.”

Last week, Diné No Nukes participated in protests in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness of past and ongoing contamination of water supplies in the west, which disproportionately affects Indian country.

“These uranium mines cause radioactive contamination, and as a result all the residents in their vicinity are becoming nuclear radiation victims,” said Petuuche Gilbert of the Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment, the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment and Indigenous World Association. “New Mexico and the federal government have provided little funding for widespread clean up and only occasionally are old mines remediated.  The governments of New Mexico and the United States have a duty to clean up these radioactive mines and mills and, furthermore, to perform health studies to determine the effects of radioactive poisoning. The MASE and LACSE organizations oppose new uranium mining and demand legacy uranium mines to be cleaned up,” said Mr. Gilbert.

Politicians continue to take advantage of Native Americans, making deals with mining companies that would continue polluting their water supplies. Senator John McCain sneaked a resolution into the last defense bill which gave land to Resolution Copper. Their planned copper mining would poison waters that Apaches rely on and would desecrate the ceremonial grounds at Oak Flat.

by Sara Jerome, originally posted on December 16, 2015

One percent of Americans are living without running water.

VICE News recently examined this problem, focusing on the Navajo Nation, where a lack of infrastructure and decades of uranium mining have made clean tap water unavailable to many. About 40 percent of residents on the Navajo Nation lack access to tap water, the report said.

The Navajo Nation has a 70 percent unemployment rate in part because the lack of running water makes it difficult for businesses to operate, the report said.

“Many people leave [the reservation] to survive,” the report said.

Residents without access haul water from watering points served by the Navajo Tribal Utilities Authority (NTUA) or from “unregulated sources, such as livestock wells and springs. The number of unregulated water sources is estimated to be in the low thousands,” according to the U.S. EPA.

NTUA is tasked with fixing the tap-water problem. According to the utility, it services the 27,000 square-mile Navajo Nation, including 36,600 water and 13,600 wastewater customers. The cost to solve the tap-water problem is $5 billion at minimum, according to Rex Kontz, the deputy general manager at NTUA.

“There aren’t a lot of places to pull money from. The normal avenues that cities take, like raising rates, which generates all this money, we don’t have those options,” he said.

He estimated that it could be 50 years before tap water access is universal on the Navajo Nation. “Some people are going to be dead before they get it,” he said.

Uranium mining during the Cold War played a major role in contaminating reservation water sources. Many of the companies responsible for mining no longer exist. Eight companies that remain active, including Chevron and General Electric, are investigating and cleaning up the mines they are responsible for, the report said.

“There are still 400 sites that remain unaccounted for,” the report said.

Around 1.7 million Americans lack access to running water in their homes and many of them live on reservations, the report said.

For more stories about the systems that get drinking water to consumers, visit Water Online’s Asset Management Solutions Center.

The influx of refugees from Syria is crippling Jordan’s ability to provide clean water to its people.

-by Michael Tiboris, December 11, 2015

Water scarcity defines life in many parts of the Middle East. But careful water management and technological advances have created some previously unimaginable pockets of water security. Israel, for example, combined proactive conservation, desalination and wastewater recycling to produce a water surplus last year. Jordan, too, has managed to provide its citizens with nearly universal (if intermittent) access to drinking water. This stability, however, is fragile, and is increasingly threatened by spillover from the Syrian civil war.

Jordan’s water management record is a case in point. Nearly everyone in the country has access to drinking water sources and sanitation. King Abdullah II has put sustained effort into developing the country’s water supplies. This has yielded some mega-projects, including the billion-dollar Disi Conveyance Project completed in 2013, which brings groundwater from the Disi aquifer in the south to the cities in the north, through 210 miles of pipes. Yet water continues to be rationed there, as it has been since the 1980s. In many places, even large cities like Amman, it is available only about once every week to twelve days.

Moreover, Disi groundwater is what is sometimes referred to as “fossil water,” since it comes from an aquifer that refills on geologic time, making it effectively non-renewable. As a result, Jordan is pumping an unsustainable amount of water out of its aquifers, and is doing it at rates that are among the most unsustainable in the world. Making matters worse, Jordan’s infrastructure has chronic leakage problems, losing 40 to 75 percent of the water it extracts before it can be used.

The surge of Syrians into Jordan creates a broad set of new problems, such as pollution and new tensions between refugees and host communities. There are likely over one million refugees in Jordan, and while some are in camps, including Za’atri—now the largest refugee camp in the world and Jordan’s fifth largest city—many have settled in northern cities. These locations present somewhat different water-related challenges. Water must be transported to the camps, which is an expensive logistical challenge in a place where necessary infrastructure is scarce to non-existent. A sharp increase in the urban population, on the other hand, risks over-taxing the water delivery and sanitation systems. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation has noted serious reductions in the ability of cities to treat wastewater that threatens to degrade sanitation. Because water cannot be cost-effectively imported in bulk, these sudden changes have meant accelerating the extraction of a limited and dwindling resource.

Water insecurity is both an effect and cause of conflict in the region. Widespread crop failures and huge livestock losses between 2006 and 2011 encouraged increasingly food insecure farmers to flood economically-depressed cites where they found little besides unemployment. Poor water management and climate change are root causes of these sorts of migrations, and a violent political response transformed them into the ongoing civil war.

The Syrian government, long before the conflict began, encouraged the overexploitation of groundwater for agriculture by subsidizing water-intensive crops, like chickpeas, lentils and cotton. Often these crops are grown in water-inefficient ways. This is, unfortunately, common practice the world over, and it avoidably increases the risk of future scarcity-conflict cycles. High overexploitation rates produce short-term production gains for individuals at the expense of long-term collective resilience.

We should expect increasing conflict between states over water sources since hydrologic boundaries frequently cross political ones. The Disi aquifer, for example, is almost entirely underneath Saudi Arabia. This leaves Jordan with no significant sources of water of its own.

Recent cooperation between Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the Red Sea-Dead Sea plan to desalinate water, generate hydropower and try to reverse the disappearance of the Dead Sea is encouraging. Whether the project is feasible is another question. Shocks of droughts and refugees, woven into a complex web of political mistrust, make negotiation difficult.

Addressing cascading environmental-political crises requires a longer view and a strong investment in helping the water-poor parts of the Middle East achieve water security. Mercy Corps and USAID have made some notable progress in supporting programs focused on refugees, but foreign investment has been inadequate to the massively expensive project of regional water sustainability.

The water-related costs of absorbing the refugees are estimated at about $700 million for Jordan alone. Regional stability requires even more. The Red Sea-Dead Sea project is too expensive for any of the individual countries involved to fully fund and manage. And investing in mega projects to source water is, even by Jordan’s own analysis, insufficient to provide what it needs over the long term. It also frequently comes with substantial environmental consequences.

A comprehensive strategy would include systematic improvements in water-efficient agriculture—drip irrigation and better crop choices—which requires education and technical support. It would require repairing infrastructure to reverse the dramatic loss of water to leaks. And it also means more effective government monitoring and enforcement of good agricultural practices, including discouraging illegal wells. We should not be Pollyannaish about the effort required here. However, if we’re serious about building security for the Middle East, then the boots on the ground should include many engineers and agricultural experts.

The United States and Europe should encourage the development of comprehensive water strategies for every major watershed in the region. This has been attempted before. The 1950s Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan was ultimately rejected by the Arab League following the Suez Crisis (though large parts of it were adopted by both Israel and Jordan). Contemporary plans must ultimately be presented by the countries concerned and with wide transparency to avoid the perception that they are simply vehicles for foreign exploitation.

Water resources in places like Jordan are even more threatened than they were before. We have some tools to address these problems, but they require a broad base of cooperation and planning. Following the COP21 climate conference, leaders would do well to connect the policy links between climate change, resource consumption and political instability. Agreements reached there are, in a very real sense, peace negotiations, as there is no path to lasting political stability in the Middle East without improving its water stability.

Imported water is depleting but the taps continue to flow here – this is not at all due to good fortune

-by Ng Joo Hee, originally published on November 27, 2015

Not many people know that there are 17 freshwater reservoirs in Singapore, or that we have a large reservoir across the Causeway in Johor.

Constructed by the PUB following a 1990 treaty supplementary to Singapore’s 1962 Water Agreement with Malaysia, the Linggiu Reservoir dwarfs them all. In fact, with an 18km girth and 55 sq km in area, Linggiu is five times larger than all of Singapore’s other reservoirs combined.

RESERVOIR STOCK RUNNING LOW

Two weeks ago, my boss, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli, made the bumpy trek to Linggiu. He did so with one aim: to tell the Singaporean public that – because of persistent dry weather – Linggiu Reservoir is more than half empty and that, while water supply in Singapore remains steady and resilient, the dry weather may eventually also affect us.

As I write, several parts of Johor Baru are well into the fourth month of water rationing. Many of Johor’s own reservoirs are at critically low levels and a “one-day-on- two-days-off” scheduled water supply has been in operation since early August. The water authority there has asked PUB to augment its supply during this period with an additional five million gallons a day (mgd) of potable water from our treatment plant in Johor, which we readily agreed to do.

Imported water – which can meet half of Singapore’s daily demand for drinking water – is under threat and steadily depleting, but the taps continue to flow for consumers here. This is an unappreciated blessing. For sure, this outcome is not in any way due to good fortune. It stems from long and careful planning, and conscientious implementation by PUB and other parts of the Government.

Singapore’s continued ability to ensure water security and sustainability guarantees our national survival and economic prosperity. This was the case at Independence and it remains so now, when Singapore has turned 50.

Singapore’s current demand for water is approximately 400 mgd, roughly 730 Olympic-size pools full of the life-giving stuff, with each person using an average of 150 litres a day.

As industry and commerce grow and our population increases, the demand for water can only rise. We expect total demand to double by 2061, to 800 mgd. This is also around the time our 99-year water agreement with Malaysia will end.

By 2030, 15 years from now, total demand would have reached 560 mgd, or a third more than today’s.

This is water that we do not have now – water that we will need to find and treat.

There is just not enough space in Singapore to collect and store all the water that we need. Although right on the Equator and in the tropics, Singapore is actually a severely water-challenged country. We spend a lot of time and devote a lot of resources in planning for the future. PUB always builds ahead of demand. Construction of Singapore’s third desalination plant will soon commence. Plans for a fourth have just been announced. And you can be sure that we are busy working on the one after that.

Water security is a matter of life and death for us in Singapore. Our existence as a sovereign nation is directly contingent on enduring water security. The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, recognised this fact from day one, and worked tirelessly throughout his life to secure our water future. He once said: “Water dominated every other policy. Every other policy had to bend at the knees for water survival.”

Singapore’s water strategy comes in three parts. First of all, we have to maximise our own yield. So we strive to collect every drop of rain that falls here. This means turning as much of Singapore as possible into a water catchment, and keeping our drains, canals and waterways pristine.

Second, we have to think of water as an endlessly reusable resource. In our minds, the H2O molecule is never lost. Water can always be reclaimed and re-treated so that it can be drunk again.

PUB is a world leader in this. Today, we are able to turn wastewater into sweet water for very little money. We reclaim every drop of sewage and turn much of it into drinking water again.

And third, because Singapore is surrounded by sea, we turn seawater into drinking water. When membrane separation technology made desalination economically viable, PUB adopted it with great zeal. And we continue to research better desalination technology to find less expensive ways of desalting water.

Our plan, in the long run, is for fully 80 per cent of Singapore’s water needs to be met by desalinated and recycled water.

TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, INGENUITY

The future of water security in Singapore may lie with desalination and reuse, but we also know that if we just do more of the same, the next drop of water will always be more expensive to collect, to treat and to deliver. So, PUB is always looking for new ways of doing things, new innovations that will let us produce water cheaper, and in an easier way.

Because the heavens do not give us enough water or the space to keep it, we have looked to clever science and high technology, and to human ingenuity, for improvements… It will be technology and innovation that will allow us to collect and clean our wastewater, and continue to keep our soil, rivers, lakes and seas clean and hospitable.

We are crystal clear about achieving three outcomes for research and innovation in the water sector: to increase water resources; lower the cost of production; and improve security and system resilience.

In order to achieve and sustain these outcomes, PUB has invested and continues to invest a lot of money in water-related scientific research, in nurturing human talent in water technology and engineering, and in actively developing a thriving and globally competitive water industry.

Water R&D is an exciting and fast-moving area. The cutting-edge science that PUB is supporting in research laboratories all over Singapore suggests that we are on the cusp of realising some truly game-changing technologies. Let me provide a few examples.

• Desalination may be weather- resistant, but it is energy- intensive and a costly means of making seawater drinkable. Working with collaborators, PUB is ready to demonstrate electro-deionisation – the use of a new separation technology – as a far more energy-efficient way of taking salt out of seawater. But why stop there? Mother Nature, as always, does it best. Mangrove and fish in the sea need fresh water too, and they are able to remove excess salt with minimal effort. Biomimicry offers great promise and is another area of research that we have devoted considerable resources to.

• PUB engineers who have made wastewater treatment their life work will tell you that there is “gold” in sewage. Sludge, an inevitable by-product of sewage treatment, is concentrated organic material. Energy can be readily recovered from sewage sludge in the form of methane gas. Because sludge management technology is advancing by the day, modern sewage treatment facilities are fast becoming waste-to-energy plants. PUB’s planned Tuas Water Reclamation Plant will be just that. To be developed jointly with the National Environment Agency’s Integrated Waste Management Facility, this combined unit will be a world first, bringing unprecedented synergies in terms of land use, energy savings and operational efficiency.

• Leaky pipes are enemy No. 1 for water network engineers. It is quite senseless to expend effort and energy in making water potable only to lose it through leaks in the water transmission network. Losses because of leaks are a perennial challenge for water utilities the world over, and the water systems in some countries can lose as much as half of their production due to leaks. Despite fastidious attention to finding and plugging pipe leaks here, keeping our losses at the current 5 per cent is a daily challenge for our engineers and technicians. Again, technology offers a solution. PUB is busy fitting out our extensive water conveyance network, most of which is underground, with sophisticated pressure and acoustic sensors. These not only detect pipeline ruptures, but careful study of sensor data will even help us predict imminent leaks before they happen, allowing us to do pre-emptive repairs.

Despite severely limiting geographic constraints, today’s Singapore is not short of water.

As long as we at PUB continue to be smart and clear-eyed about our nation’s water situation, and do our work well, there should always be enough water. This is possible only because we have used our imagination, researching and testing continuously, and have exploited technology to overcome our water challenges.

In this way, we have turned disadvantage into strength, and seemingly insurmountable vulnerability into endless opportunity.

originally posted on November 12, 2015

When a tormenta sweeps in to Mexico City, the rain does not just fall, it insists. Gently at first with a mid-afternoon patter on windows and windscreens, then more urgently with an evening downpour that turns splashes into puddles, until finally – with a nighttime climax of thunder and lightning rolling down from the distant volcanos – the deluge gushes through gutters and gullies, transforming trickles in runnels into torrents in tunnels. The floods are a reminder of the natural order of things: water belongs here.

This geological, historical fact is a reason why the Aztecs built a city of floating gardens here 700 years ago that became known as “the Venice of the New World”. The vast lakes that once filled the plain were, however, steadily drained by settlers. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores rapidly accelerated the process, and modern engineers have almost finished the task, replacing the lacustrine marshes with a grey sea of concrete, tarmac and steel that, in the central city alone, is now home to almost nine million residents.

As a result, supplies for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning must be pumped up from hundreds of metres underground, or from a distance of more than 100km. Getting the required billions of litres up to this megalopolis – 2,400m above sea level – is one of the world’s great feats of hydro-engineering. If mastery over water is a marker of civilisation, then Mexico City is surely one of mankind’s most spectacular achievements.

Yet, from the point of view of sustainability and social equality, it is also among the more absurd failures. Discharging a resource that falls freely from the heavens and replacing it with exactly the same H₂O from far away is expensive, inefficient, energy intensive and ultimately inadequate for the population’s needs. It also creates a paradox: although Mexico City has more rainy days than London, it suffers shortages more in keeping with a desert, making the price of each litre among the highest in the world – despite its often dire quality.

The growing costs – social, economic, health and environmental – are a source of stress and conflict. Government leaders and big businesses are pushing ahead with ever bigger hydro-engineering projects that upset conservationists and indigenous groups. Congress and NGOs are fighting over the possible privatisation of water. Meanwhile, shortages and floods are creating social tensions in the Federal District and its surrounding states.

Worldwide, water is now more valuable, and more stressed, than ever before. The need for new ways of dealing with the problems has never been more urgent. Few places demonstrate that more than Mexico City, where this most fundamental of elements flows through a system that grows more complex and more fraught by the day. From source to sewer, the course of each drop tells a heroic, tragic, unfinished story of urban growth and human development. Over a week, the Guardian has traced this path, revealing the triumphs of the past, the current battles, and the crisis looming in the future.

3. Iztapalapa: dry taps, hot conflict

No one needs to tell Adrián Vazquez about the risks of conflict. For him, they are a fact of life. As a pipa (water tanker) driver in the poor, overcrowded borough of Iztapalapa, he is at the fraught, far end of the city’s supply line. Tension comes with the territory.

Two months ago, Vazquez was hijacked by an angry mob. “They put a gun to my head and told me I had to do what they said or I would die,” he recalls, during a break between shifts. “They were desperate and angry, and they blamed me because I had water.”

Iztapalapa: Mexico City’s parched suburb

It is an all-too-common experience. The driver reckons each year he is hijacked five or six times. His depot is also a target when shortages become unbearable. “This place has also been attacked,” he says. “Sometimes, we try to go home at 11pm but crowds of people invade the depot and refuse to leave until we deliver water to their homes. It can be hell.”

Like all the drivers in the depot, Vazquez lives locally, so he can sympathise with the frustration. Located in the east of Mexico City, Iztapalapa is the poorest, most populous and least water-sufficient borough in the metropolis. Its own wells are contaminated by toxic metals that have to be filtered out of the water at great expense. But even after this is done, there is almost always a shortfall. In theory, that is made up by Cutzamala’s reservoirs, but in reality they are of scant help: consumption by wealthy districts in the west – and leaks in between – leave only a trickle more than 150km from the source.

The amount of water coming out of the taps mirrors inequality. In Ulysses, James Joyce celebrated water’s “universality, democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level” – but the type of urban delivery system he admired in 20th-century Dublin is pushed beyond the limits in 21st-century Mexico City. The result is anything but equal and constant.

Pipe pressure matches income levels – both of which go down the further you get from Cutzamala. In the wealthy western boroughs of Miguel Hidalgo and Cuajimalpa, where most of the city’s golf courses are located, water pressure is 14kg per square centimetre, enough for lawn sprinklers. Closer to the centre, in the commercial districts of Polanco and Benito Juárez, the upper- and middle-classes have to get by with less than half that pressure and face occasional shortages. This is nothing, though, compared to the situation in eastern Iztapalapa, where pipe pressure is just 500g per square centimetre, and taps are dry more often than not.

Sacmex invests more in this borough than any other, but the scale of the challenge is overwhelming. City officials explain that Iztapalapa’s development was largely unplanned. About 1.8 million (mostly poor) people have moved to the area over the past four decades, and the infrastructure is slowly being built around them. It does not help that the well water in the area contains a toxic cocktail of chemicals – magnesium, nitrogen, sodium, iron and sulphuric gas – that has to be filtered in purification plants. Even so, on those rare days when something comes out of the tap, it can be red, yellow, or smell like rotten eggs.

Let’s imagine, though, that our drop of water is among the dribble from Cutzamala that makes it this far. By this point it is almost unrecognisable, having been hydro-electrically elevated 1,100 metres, then dropped again by gravity through more than 150km of pipes and aquifers. It has lost more than a third of its volume to leaks, and its chemical composition has been changed by three chlorinisation plants and whatever contaminants it has picked up on the way.

No longer crystal clear, it rests for a few hours or days in a storage tank below the concrete surface of the pipa depot. Once Vasquez fills his 10,000-litre tanker, it is then driven several hundred metres up the slopes of Avenida Miravalle to one of the city’s poorest and most feared neighbourhoods.

Many Mexico City residents are afraid to enter the hillside communities on the far eastern fringes of Iztapalapa, which are notorious for narco-gangs and carjackers. But for the tanker drivers, there is little choice. The pipa – which are supposed to be for emergencies only – have become a daily necessity. “I’ve done this job for 12 years and there have only been two occasions when the pipe pressure was good enough to ensure we didn’t have to work,” Vazquez laughs.

For the communities they serve, water is a source of perennial anxiety. “It’s what everyone talks about,” says Patricia Zaragoza, a shopkeeper in the Ejidos de Santa Maria neighbourhood, who joined a recent protest after the pipes in her home were empty for six weeks. Hundreds of people blocked the street and unfurled banners demanding “more water” and “clean water”. All they secured was a promise of another well – which alarmed locals, who fear it will simply add to the subsidence of their homes – and more pipa trucks.

The tankers remain a lifeline. In the half-built home next to Zaragoza’s shop, Alejandra Salgado asks Vazquez to fill three buckets, one bowl, one iron bathtub, and three cisterns. As she watches the water pour in, she lets out a sigh of relief: “Thank god, it’s quite clear this time. Last time, it was yellow.”

As soon as a bucket is filled, one of her four sons soaks a cloth and starts cleaning the dirt off his shoes. His mother shakes her head and says it was very different when she was a child, growing up in the countryside. “You can’t understand what it is like to be without water until you live like this,” she says. “Water is the number one priority.”

Finding supplies to drink, wash food, clean clothes, bathe and flush the toilet is expensive as well as time-consuming. Many parents – usually the mothers – have to take a bus to the pipa depot to petition for water; it is supposed to be free, but residents customarily pay the driver a tip of 30 to 50 pesos. In addition, Salgado – like most Mexico City residents – buys mineral water for drinking. Each 19-litre garrafone costs 9 pesos. Altogether, she estimates that about a fifth of the family’s 2,500 peso-income goes on water. “We plan to leave the city because we can’t afford life here,” she says.

How access to clean water differs for families across the world

by Matt Petronzio

The global water crisis has greatly improved over the past 15 years, but it’s far from over.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations’ blueprint for tackling the world’s most pressing issues, expire this year, allowing us to look at how far we’ve come as well as what we can do better with the next set of global targets — the Sustainable Development Goals.

Goal 7 of the MDGs focused in part on water scarcity, with a target of halving the number of people around the world without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation services. Today, 91% of the world’s population uses an improved drinking water source, compared to 76% in 1990, but water scarcity still affects more than 40% of people, across every continent.

And that number’s projected to increase. That means the world’s most marginalized and impoverished families continue to live without the basic human right of water, affecting their health, safety and survival.

This summer, UNICEF assigned photographer Ashley Gilbertson to document the various ways families around the world access and use water, and their relationships to the precious resource.

In his resulting portrait series, #WaterIs: A family affair, Gilbertson takes us into the homes of families in seven countries, where they pose next to visual representations of how much water they use every day. Whether they’re in a poor urban district in Bolivia, a refugee camp in northern Jordan or the photographer’s own home in downtown Manhattan, these families all have at least one thing in common: Water is central to their daily lives.

As this week marks World Water Week, the annual meeting in Stockholm that focuses on global water issues, these portraits — and the stories behind them — remind us of the work that still needs to be done.

Bolivia

Home to more than 10 million people, Bolivia’s economic growth and the government’s investments in basic social services have led to an increase in access to safe water and better sanitation.

In 1990, 91% of urban populations in Bolivia had access to improved drinking water source; today, 97% of the country’s urban dwellers have access to improved water sources.

But rural areas — many of which have sparse populations living in abject poverty — still face challenges. In 1990, 40% of the country’s rural populations had access to better drinking water. Still, in 2015, only 76% have access to improved water sources.

The Estebans — 12-year old Marisol, eight-year-old Josue, and their parents Ronaldo and Augistina — live in District 7, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, with limited access to water.

They use 100 liters per day: 16 liters for cooking and drinking, 6 liters to wash dishes, 30 liters to wash their clothes, and 48 liters to shower and wash their hands and faces.

“The most important thing in my life and my home is water,” Augistina told UNICEF. “Without it we don’t have life.”

Niger

Niger is the largest country in West Africa, with a population of more than 18 million. But only 58% of Nigeriens have access to improved drinking water sources due to the country’s desert climates, droughts and political instability.

In 1990, 61% of urban populations and 29% of rural populations had access to better drinking water. Today, an impressive 100% of urban populations in Niger have access, while only 49% of rural populations have access.

The Mahamadou family — seven-year-old Aliou, five-year-old Kadidja, 16-month-old Zeinabou, and their parents Mariama Abdou and Mahamadou Moussa — uses a stone to filter their water, separating clear water from mud. It’s a common practice in their village near the Niger River.

The family uses 60 liters of water per day for drinking and cooking.

Because of their proximity to the river, they have plenty of access to water, but it often carries diseases such as cholera, which Mariama contracted two years ago. After treatment, she luckily survived.

“I feel really blessed to be close to the water because I waste less time than other people,” Mariama told UNICEF. “When I get to the river, it’s a good opportunity to talk to other women. We discuss marriage, baptisms and the community.”

Jordan

India

India has made moderate progress in sustainable water access since 1990. Then, 89% of urban populations and 64% of rural populations had access to improved drinking water sources. Now, those numbers have risen to 97% and 93%, respectively.

But India still has one of the most challenging water crises in the world, with groundwater becoming alarmingly scarce. Everyone from farmers to city dwellers to large corporations are draining the country’s wells and aquifers, while the remaining water is highly polluted.

Meanwhile, only 36% of Indians across the country have access to improved sanitation facilities — only 25% in rural areas.

The Gayali family — 83-year-old Nabin Chandra, his wife Bhuljhara, 16-year-old daughter Bishaksha, daughter-in-law Swarga, sons Monodish and Krishna, and daughter Beauty — live in the Indian village of Shakdah, Nadia District, West Bengal State.

They use 220 liters of water per day: 30 liters for cooking, 60 liters for bathing, 20 liters for cleaning the house, 70 liters for laundry and washing the dishes, and 40 liters for the family’s cow, Kangali.

The Gayalis obtain all of their water from a hand pump that was installed deep into the ground three years ago. That water is extremely high in iron, however, giving it a pungent odor and turning it murky when exposed to oxygen.

“Our water is not so good,” Nabin Chandra told UNICEF. “It has a lot of iron in it. You can see the deposits in the water after it’s come out of the pump, and it causes us digestion and stomach problems.”

Before the hand pump, Swarga would need to walk more than 200 meters (more than 650 feet) to the neighbor’s house 40 times each day in order to get water for the family.

“I felt like I was walking back and forth all day, just to get water,” she said.

Myanmar

Like much of Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s wet season runs from the end of May through early October and the dry season runs from October to May — but water scarcity is a year-long problem.

While the dry season — especially the hot months beginning in late February — means chronic water shortages, the flooding caused by annual monsoons during the wet season swiftly contaminates the country’s groundwater wells used for drinking water.

Today, 93% of Myanmar’s urban populations and 74% of rural populations have access to improved drinking water sources, up from 80% and 51%, respectively.

The Kyaw family — Kyaw Soe, his wife Nyo Oo, 12-year-old Ei Mon and seven-year-old Ei Zin — owns a general store in Hnen Ser Kyin, Magway Region, Myanmar.

They use 100 liters of water per day from the area’s borehole: 20 liters for drinking, 20 liters for cooking, and 60 liters for washing dishes and using the toilet. In the rainy season, they can draw an additional 200 liters for bathing from the local well or ponds, which saves them the equivalent to $0.40 USD per day. However, this surface water is often contaminated, and has made the family sick in the past.

“In the dry season, we have to wake up very early and get to the well before it gets crowded,” Kyaw Soe told UNICEF. “There are two villages that rely on that well, and so, because of huge demand, the water table was dropping, so sometimes we have to give it time.”

United States of America

Struggling with aging infrastructure, strapped resources, and poor access, privatization is being pitched as the cure to Mexico’s water woes. But will it leave people high and dry?

-by David Adler, originally posted on July 31, 2015

MEXICO CITY — On March 22, while the United Nations celebrated World Water Day, hundreds of protestors marched down Mexico City’s Avenida de los Insurgentes toward the office of the National Water Commission. Under a smoggy sky, they chanted through loudspeakers, painted posters, and, arriving at the office, scaled the front gates and erected signs. “El agua es nuestra, carajo!” screamed one poster. The water is ours, goddamnit! A more diplomatic sign read: “El H₂0 no es un negocio.” Water is not a business.

For the past several months, however, that has been a matter of debate.

In late February, Mexico’s ruling coalition proposed a change to the General Water Act that would allow for the privatization of Mexico’s water supply. According to the new legislation, the National Water Commission, known as Conagua for its Spanish name, maintains the right “to grant full or partial concessions to operate, conserve, maintain, rehabilitate, modernize, or expand water infrastructure built by the federal government.” Approved by Mexico’s lower legislative house, the bill was set to pass the Senate until it was waylaid — momentarily — by public outcry. Now returning to the legislature after Mexico’s midterm elections in June, the bill’s fate remains uncertain.

The new legislation aims to correct Mexico’s broken system of public water provision. Close to 5 million Mexicans currently live without access to clean water. The new bill aims to alleviate this deficit by outsourcing water provision to the private sector, which claims it can provide water better, cheaper, and cleaner than the Mexican government.

Mexico’s ruling right-wing parties and its allies in the business sector view the privatization effort as a simple matter of efficiency. “The participation of the private sector is the same as we have seen in all of Mexico’s infrastructure — they construct, finance, and operate,” said Kamel Athié Flores, president of the Commission on Drinking Water and Sanitation, a federal agency under the direction of President Enrique Peña Nieto. “The public investment is not sufficient.”

Mexico’s left-wing parties and grassroots activists, however, foresee heavy costs. Privatization, they claim, will divert water away from Mexico’s citizens and toward its polluting industries. Costs would rise, and quality would decline. They, too, acknowledge the deficit in public investment, but suggest the opposite solution. According to the grassroots movement, reforms should strengthen the public sector. The state must guarantee Mexico’s constitutional right to “safe, acceptable, and affordable” water.

“We are in an extreme situation of water pollution, overexploitation, and a lack of access to the most vulnerable,” said Elena Burns, leader of the “Water for All, Water for Life” campaign, back at the protest in March. “We are in a critical moment.” Returning to the legislature this fall, the new bill will determine this critical moment — the bottle or the tap, provision for the peso or provision for all, renouncing the public system or beginning the long journey to fix it.

Despite the disputes over the solution to Mexico’s water system, there is widespread consensus on its problems. In a recent survey by the Inter-American Development Bank, 81 percent of Mexicans reported that they do not drink tap water, both for a lack of access and a lack of trust in its quality.

The history of Mexico’s water is defined by overuse and under-preparation. Throughout the Mexican miracle, as the economic boom from the 1940s to the 1970s is known, industries continually overused aquifer reserves, as politicians sought to promote economic growth. As the boom wore on, Mexicans flooded the cities in pursuit of new economic opportunities. Between 1950 and 1980, the country’s population more than doubled, from 28 million to over 70 million. In Mexico’s cities, where most of the growth was concentrated, water infrastructure could not keep up with increasing demand.

Nowhere was this more visible than Mexico City. Once a lake and now a concrete sprawl, Mexico City has long struggled to import water from outside the city and find a way to move its sewage out. In the earthquake of 1985, this weak water infrastructure finally crumbled. In total, 60 pipelines broke on the main aqueduct, with several thousand breaks on the primary and secondary distribution systems.

Today, according to official numbers, more than a third of the water in the city leaks out of its underground pipes — a total of some 800 gallons per second. The water that does make it to city taps is contaminated by a variety of bacteria, some of it deadly, by the time it gets there: According to researchers at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, Mexico City ranks first in the world for gastrointestinal infections from water consumption.

But water contamination is a nationwide phenomenon. According to a recent U.N. report, more than 70 percent of Mexico’s total water bodies are contaminated. In many parts of the country, rivers have become so polluted that politicians have reclassified them as sewers — a regulatory trick that also relieves the politicians of the responsibility to restore them. The extensive contamination drove Mexico’s nationwide outbreak of cholera — carried through municipal water systems — in the 1990s.

It is in this context that the push for water privatization has emerged.

With public water utilities in shambles, the private sector has picked up the slack. Mexico leads the world in bottled water consumption, with an estimated 125 gallons per person annually. It is projected that the bottled water industry will grow to $13 billion in 2015, up from only $9 billion back in 2011.

Today, millions of Mexicans depend exclusively on private tankers to deliver their water. In Yuguelito, a low-income settlement on the edge of the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa, large plastic barrels line the narrow streets, each belonging to a different household. Every day, fresh tankers arrive to fill the barrels, providing residents their only access to the water they will use to wash dishes, clothes, bathe, and cook.

Yet this method of distribution is inadequate, unsafe, and extremely expensive. “In Yuguelito, you are seeing people living with [5 gallons] a day,” says David Vargas, chief operating officer at Isla Urbana, a local organization that develops water capture and purification systems for communities throughout Mexico City. “That’s only one-fifth of the daily need recognized by the World Health Organization.”

The water delivered by these tankers is no better than what comes out of the taps — a shade of brown that inspires little confidence and causes big health problems for residents. “A lot of these trucks are coming directly from wells in Mexico City,” says Vargas. “In Iztapalapa, during the rainy season, these wells get saturated, and the water becomes muddy, so Iztapalapa residents end up with the worst quality water for their daily use.”

Without potable water from the municipality, many Mexicans rely instead on the distribution of garrafones, large jugs of purified water. Every day in Yuguelito, garrafon dealers travel through the settlement on bicycles welded to large metal receptacles to carry the jugs from home to home. This garrafon distribution guarantees access to clean water, but at a huge markup. According to Vargas, purchasing trucks and jugs can cost up to 10 times more than a municipal connection.

This means that for communities like Yuguelito, privatization reform misses the point. If the new bill passes, corporations may invest in Mexico’s water infrastructure, improving the quality of municipal resources and the efficiency of its distribution. But privatization does not promise to extend this infrastructure to the millions of Mexicans who currently lack access to those municipal resources. According to many local activists, resolving the crisis for Mexico’s poorest residents, instead, will require a very active role for Mexico’s government.

In another community on the outskirts of Iztapalapa, residents used to rely on a similar system of private tankers and jugs. Last year, unable to afford these water costs, residents of La Luz mobilized to protest for water provision, arriving week after week at the offices of the delegation. After several months, the delegation finally relented. Today, the delegation delivers water “clandestinely,” sneaking a hose underneath the entrance of the colony to fill up the water barrels every day.

The tale of La Luz illustrates the crucial — if imperfect — role that the government has played in providing water to Mexico’s poorest residents. Through protest, communities like La Luz have been able to apply pressure on and negotiate with their local municipalities.

The privatization reform is, then, not merely a question of public vs. private provision. It is also a question of Mexico’s democracy more broadly. With the transfer of water control to the private sector, Mexico’s poorest lose much of their bargaining power. Unable to negotiate on the basis of their protest, they will have to negotiate on the basis of their peso. As difficult as it is to wrangle state support, residents of slums like La Luz may find it even more difficult to meet their needs in the case of privatization reform.

The implications of water privatization are, however, more far-reaching than daily provision.

For one, while Mexico has pushed its privatization legislation, countries like South Africa, Argentina, and Bolivia are discovering that privatized water yields mixed results. Private management can raise prices, reduce infrastructure investment, and increase pollution at the hands of industry. As a result, more than 180 cities in 35 countries have moved to “re-municipalize” their water systems, taking them out of the hands of the private sector and putting them back under government control.

Activists and academics fear that Mexico’s proposed legislation would bring on the same problems that privatization has generated around the world. “We will be subsidizing the private sector,” says Burns of Water for Life, “through direct investment and through subsidies to vulnerable sectors.” According to Burns, corporations will overexploit local resources, and the federal government will be absolved of its responsibility for reducing the levels of arsenic and lead in the country’s tap water.

Many fear that water concessions are driven by incoming oil money. Last August, Mexico passed comprehensive energy reform legislation, opening up its oil industry after nearly a century of state control. International oil companies have described Mexico as a “sweet shop,” hungry to import new technologies like hydraulic fracking. While the government’s initial auction on July 15 attracted few bidders — largely due to plummeting oil prices — it expects the rate of private drilling to pick up considerably over the course of the year.

Fracking, which injects water into the ground to extract natural gas, requires a great deal of water. A single fracking operation can consume between 2 and 10 million gallons of water, employing an average of 400 tankers to transport the water to and from the injection site. Privatization would allow for municipalities to transfer complete control over their water resources to fracking operators. The new law proposed in March both allows for “concession” of water infrastructure to private companies and guarantee awards for “industrial use.”

The challenge for Mexico’s water reserves will be enormous: Most of the shale deposits in Mexico are in its dry regions, meaning that water is already scarce. So while the quality of the water may improve in private hands, the quantity is in question.

Overall, the privatization effort seems to pose a wide variety of new dangers to Mexico’s ongoing water crisis. New concessions may siphon away water from Mexican citizens, pollute the existing sources of water, and ultimately nullify the population’s constitutional right to “safe, acceptable, and affordable” water. 

To the surprise of many, March’s grassroots mobilization succeeded in communicating these dangers to Mexico’s politicians. With thousands of signatures and thousands protesting in the streets, the movement managed to halt the progress of water privatization. According to the president of the lower house committee, the bill will be delayed “for whatever time is necessary so that the doubts and misinformation that certain politicians have taken up as their campaign can be cleared up.”

In other words, the battle is only half-won. With the vote still on hold, grassroots organizations have continued to mobilize to fight privatization. In May, states like Chiapas, Nuevo León, and Puebla held local conferences to discuss the General Water Act. Under the banner of “without water there is no life,” these local groups organized an 11-day walking caravan, marching toward Mexico City from 30 different states around the country. Thousands arrived in the capital on May 22, swarming the main square to protest privatization. “We have encountered a country torn apart and bloodstained,” they announced in a press conference.

Activists remain hopeful. “With the strength of our critique — from a variety of different social networks — we succeeded in postponing the law that they proposed with a great deal of force,” says Claudia Campero Arena of the Washington-based NGO Food and Water Watch. “Legislators will look for a way to change the paradigm of water in this country, but we will work with public opinion to prevent it.”

The hopeful message is, however, not realistic. The recent victory depended largely on June’s midterm election. Politicians in Mexico seek to avoid controversial legislation close to election time. Once in power, though, they are often willing disregard citizen protest. Similar grassroots mobilizations emerged last year around the energy reforms, when tens of thousands of protestors marched on Mexico City. But President Peña Nieto did not hesitate to push forward with the reform.

Following the solid victory of Mexico’s right-wing coalition last month, the objections to water privatization will likely fall on equally deaf ears. When legislators return in September, there is little evidence that anything will stop the momentum of Mexico’s privatization crusade.

originally posted on July 9, 2015

Jordan is the third-driest country in the world, and more than 600,000 Syrian refugees are now living there alongside their Jordanian neighbors. Clean water was already scarce, and now the limited resource must serve a much larger population.

It’s summer now, and the hot, dry conditions in Jordan only make the need for water more dire. Unfortunately, the country’s water network is breaking down — much of the water that Jordan does have is lost to leaks in the pipeline.

There simply isn’t enough water to go around, and people must ration enough to use for drinking, bathing, and cooking. The lack of sufficient water causes stress, serious health problems, and tension between native Jordanians and Syrian refugees.

But a team of dedicated Mercy Corps engineers is working to rebuild the aging water system so that both Jordanian and Syrian refugee families have enough clean water to stay healthy. Their work has already improved access to clean water for 500,000 people in Jordan.

We recently spoke with Ghassan “Gus” Hazboun, Mercy Corps’ Water Engineering Director, about the problem at hand and how his team is finding long-term solutions to this complex challenge.

Q: What is the water situation in Jordan now?

Gus Hazboun: Jordan right now is the third-poorest country in water. Our resources are limited. We don’t have any rivers — we have no water sources except aquifers. The aquifers are depleting right now, we are losing several meters a year. It’s becoming very alarming.

We need a solution for the water scarcity right now. We can keep drilling wells, but it’s not the solution. It’s a temporary fix, but it’s only going to help Jordan for the next few years.

Q: How has the influx of refugees affected the problem?

The network was providing barely enough water for Jordanians before the war in Syria. Now, with the huge influx of refugees, there is frustration with having to share resources.

Most Syrians came from having a lot of water — they didn’t worry about their daily use of it — but Jordanians, for years and years they have been watching how much water they use, because they know that there’s not enough.

Now there is tension with adding more people. Let’s take Mafraq [city northeast of Amman], for example. It went from 60,000 to 200,000 residents. So adding that many people to the area definitely caused tension between Jordanians and Syrians.

Q: And there are problems with the country’s water network, is that right?

The old pump stations need rehabilitation. They continually break down. And there is a lot of water leakage in the current network.

In the northern areas the leakage can be up to 70 percent of the water that flows through the network. So we have water that’s already been treated, already been pumped from the aquifer to far-away places, and then we lose that water in the network.

Q: What is Mercy Corps’ strategy to improve Jordan’s water system?

We are trying to help as much as we can by improving both the quality and the quantity of water in Jordan and repairing the water network.

We cannot just concentrate on producing more water without also addressing the energy used and the leakage in the old pipes. We must redesign the pumps so they are more efficient and use less energy. But they will still cause more leakage in the network.

So the best thing we can do, the only way forward, is to treat the network — to fix any damage and spare the waste of water. Reclaiming that wasted water is better than finding a new source of water.

Q: What are some specific ways that we are helping?

We started with two wells in Zaatari refugee camp, and now we have three wells there, one well in Azraq camp, and several projects in host communities.

We recently developed a well near the border between Jordan and Syria. The water comes here, to the water treatment and filter area. And now we are ready to build a new pump station, control building, and a 500-cubic-meter reservoir.

This infrastructure is very important for the northern areas, including the city of Mafraq. The water we are providing goes to all the houses and we are supplying everybody, both Jordanians and Syrians.

After we build this new pump station, it will last at least another 20 or 30 years without any major issues, and it will supply water for the community without any interruption in supply.

Q: Are we working with the local government on the issue?

These projects, they’ve been needed for years. But due to limited financial resources, they could not be done. So we’re working with the Jordanian government’s plan and helping complete the necessary projects. But we do it according to priorities. We look at the areas that have the most refugees, and we try to help the whole community there.

We try to help by adding more water, reducing leaks, and making things more efficient. We are helping the government achieve their goals by rehabilitating the water network and building new sources of water.

Q: Is the large scale of this effort unusual for a humanitarian organization?

Yes. Most organizations work on small networks, or they provide vouchers for people to buy water. But these projects — adding reservoirs, building pump stations, repairing networks — we are the first people here in Jordan to do such work.

It’s a big project. We are doing studies to learn how much water people are getting each week. We’re trying to check the network and find where the leaks are. And we’re doing supervision and design on new projects. Mercy Corps is the only organization here doing such infrastructure and water projects.

Q: How do you feel about the work you and your team are doing?

I am proud to work for Mercy Corps. We are doing big projects here in Jordan. And we are helping lot of people — Jordanians and Syrians.

We are helping everybody today, and for years to come. It’s not just something we are doing for the next few months. No. This project will last 30 years here in Jordan. And our name will stay on for years and years here in the area.

How you can help