Our Mission is to improve human health and community well-being through adequate and affordable access to clean water.

Read more about our mission and how we work here.

Who We Are?

Caminos de Agua is a non-profit organization working to provide open-source water solutions for communities at-risk on our aquifer in Central Mexico and leverage those solutions for others confronting similar water challenges around the globe. Our team is made up of a full and part time staff, plus graduate-level interns, and senior directors and advisers. We’re a mix of Mexicans and international residents, technologists and community organizers, researchers and educators — united by our dedication to public health and welfare. Caminos de Agua is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the U.S. as well as a Mexican Asociación Civil (A.C.).

What We Do

We provide innovative water solutions for communities at-risk on our aquifer in Central Mexico, and leverage those solutions for others confronting similar water challenges around the globe. We employ a unique bottom-up approach to working cooperatively within these communities, and freely share the results of our rigorous testing and analysis of local water supplies. We work in partnership with grassroots community organizations, leading research institutions, government at all levels, and other nonprofits to effect positive change in water awareness, solutions, policies, and practice, in an effort to create adequate access to safe, healthy drinking water supplies.

The Problem

Our aquifer is declining at an alarming rate, roughly 2-3 meters per year – some of the most overexploited groundwater in the world. The primary culprit is industrial-scale agriculture, which uses close to 85% of our water supply to grow produce for export to the U.S. and other national and foreign markets. As a result, community wells are drilled hundreds of meters deep to reach the water table. The water that does remain is often contaminated with arsenic and fluoride – up to 22 times the World Health Organization recommendation for arsenic and more than 12 times the recommendation for fluoride, causing a massive public health crisis.

Impacts on Communities

Every year, more community wells dry up and, in some cases, literally collapse in on themselves due to the ever-depleting water table. We have seen firsthand how an entire rural community’s water supply can go dry overnight, leaving hundreds of families without any water access, forcing residents are forced to fetch water from alternative sources that are often unreliable, expensive, or unsafe, putting their physical and economic wellbeing at risk—especially for women who are usually responsible for collecting water.

Further complicating the issues, extremely hard-to-remove arsenic and fluoride are closely linked to dental fluorosis, crippling skeletal fluorosis, chronic kidney disease, cognitive development and learning disabilities in children, skin disease, and even various cancers. Entire generations are being plagued with the negative impacts of arsenic and fluoride in their drinking water, and, worst of all, the most acutely impacted are children as their bodies absorb these contaminants at a much higher rate.

This is a serious public health crisis for our region and beyond. Roughly, 2.2 billion people – or more than a quarter of the entire global population – lack access to clean water. Upwards of 300 million people, with an estimated 21 million in Mexico alone, suffer from excessive levels of arsenic and fluoride in their water supplies, with few appropriate solutions available to remove these problematic contaminants. The accompanying social and economic impacts of this crisis are almost impossible to overstate. Innovative, low-cost solutions are desperately needed to address both the social needs of at risk communities who are disproportionately affected by these modern water issues, as well as the increasingly complex technical water challenges we are now facing in the 21st century.

Our Aguadapt ceramic water filter has helped provide safe drinking water to thousands in our region and beyond through dozens of partner organizations throughout the country. Recent improvements are making our filters even more versatile for wider adoption by water NGOs and for emergency relief throughout Latin America..

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Affordably removing arsenic and fluoride is our most daunting technology undertaking. This is a locally acute, globally distributed, public health challenge that impacts 10s of thousands on our aquifer alone, and 100s of millions around the world. We've made excellent progress and are installing our first pilot systems in June/July 2018.

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Our rainwater harvesting program supports community processes and leverages volunteer labor. We have helped build hundreds of rainwater cisterns, and are poised to build thousands more. Rainwater gives users control and consistency over their water source, improves community health, and reduces environmental stress on aquifers.

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Water Quality Program

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEMS

Since 2011, Caminos de Agua has developed interventions and solutions to confront a complex and multifaceted water crisis that continues to worsen. To attack the scope and intricacies of our crisis, we have carefully assembled a wide network of collaborators, technological developments, data collection, awareness building efforts, and constantly adapting them to tackle our evolving situation.