Clean Water in Tamaula

Francisco Laguna is one of the elders in the community who has spent his time working in the States but now is in Tamaula to stay. He said that potable water is not an issue during the rainy season, but that they suffer much during the dry season. Each house has a water tank that collects rain water and can store up to about 500 liters. Once the rain stops, their supply dwindles quickly.

The government helps provide water during the dry season, although they are an unreliable source. They bring up a truck of water generally once every eight days that they pour into large water buckets alongside the soccer field, if they remember.

Francisco says that what the community really needs is for each family to have a 20,000 liter water cistern, which is about $600 each to construct. About eight families have already built these, yet the remaining 37 families cannot afford this cost as they struggle to buy food each week. It would cost $22,200 to build a cistern at the rest of these houses. That’s $22,200 for an entire community to have potable water, which is the cost of a semester for of college some of the students who have volunteered Tamaula this summer. While this cost could be gifted by a private donor, there’s an even more sustainable way to go about funding the construction of these cisterns that, over a few years, would be a cost to no one, and even a financial gain to some.

The government probably spends a quarter of the $22,200 in gas and labor costs each year in bringing up water to the thirsty community. If this cost comparison was shown to someone in the local government in Guanajuato, they would be able to see that if they made this investment of $22,200 this year in building these cisterns and stop trucking water up on a weekly basis, then after four years they would have gained the money back in savings gained from a proper reallocation of financial resources.

Although a private donor could gift this money to the community to construct the cisterns, it is better that the government recognizes this plan as a sustainable, effective means of providing a necessary service to its people. This way, they can enact this plan and both save money for themselves over the years and begin to regain the trust of its people.

Another problem is that many people, such as the government, don’t believe that these are real problems because almost everyone in Tamaula lives in a fancy, large house, often times furnished with the riches of the north. However, this supposition is false. The men who migrated north to find jobs sweated over years saving enough money to build these expensive houses. Although water no longer leaks through the roof during the rainy season, new problems have surfaced and continue to abound in Tamaula.

Ignacio Laguna was able to afford an comfortable, one-story house for his wife and daughter, Clara and Luz. The luxuries of this new home include a bathroom, three large bedrooms, two televisions, a large kitchen, and solar panels. While this family lives in Mexican luxury, they continue to use electricity because they cannot afford to replace the dead batteries in the solar panels.

Mexico is full of towns like Tamaula with stories like the Laguna family. The question that political scientists, social critics, and many migrant families are asking is, “Will Mexicans continue to have to migrate to the US in order to provide for their families, or is there another way?” May we never stop thinking creatively and may no box constrain us as we re-imagine a new way.