Learn how one small village is going to help change the water paradigm in Central Mexico
The rural village of Los Ricos will soon help hundreds of other communities get clean water, more efficiently and more affordably
Los Ricos is a small, rural village located less than 20 kilometers from urban San Miguel de Allende. What makes this community different from others is that they are collaborating with us at Caminos de Agua and have become the “pilot community” for our large-scale trial, which will achieve proof of concept for our new Groundwater Treatment System and remove the significant levels of arsenic and fluoride from their water. When completed, this process will take us into a new era of treating contaminated water at the source and do so more effectively and affordably than ever before.
“Water is life. It’s a human right, but not everyone has it,” says Rosario Cenobio – a lifetime resident of Los Ricos. Rosario, like everyone else in the community, only has access to well water – contaminated with excessive arsenic and fluoride – a couple of days a week. “The water from the well is contaminated, and we don’t have the money to buy bottled water. Until now we didn’t know what to do.” For years now, many of the youth in the community have been showing up with brown teeth – dental fluorosis, which comes from the high levels of fluoride in the drinking water and is a precursor to many more serious health problems in the future. I was invited to a meeting where Caminos de Agua explained this project to get clean drinking water. [They] explained the Groundwater Treatment System and this pilot test, and they said we would need to participate and [volunteer and work hard to make this system a reality]...we said, let’s do it! [We are] very excited to work with Caminos de Agua on this project – finally we are going to have clean water!”
With five years invested in developing our new Groundwater Treatment System and countless hours spent in the lab and the field – and now with the community of Los Ricos on board and ready to partner with us – this breakthrough system is getting so close to being rolled out to benefit so many in our region. But we need your help to be able to execute this pilot with the precision and scientific rigor it demands. Getting this critical pilot system underway by the end of this year means conducting regular tests on the water we’re providing to the families in Los Ricos, paying for expensive analyses to get us in line with the State Health Secretary, preparing educational materials, conducting workshops with the residents, training local coordinators who will take on long-term ownership of the system, and providing in-depth project management.