An Unfortunate Reality for Several Communities on the Caribbean Coast.

A small community located in the southern part of Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast in Talmanaca, Limon, is still dreaming of a day where they will have drinkable water in their homes. About 10 months ago construction was begun on an aqueduct that would successfully supply water to Hone Creek, Patiño, Carbón I, Carbón II, Punta de Riel y Comadre. However, the project has since been put on hold with only 75% of the project complete, as modifications to the original design are being made.

The water for the project is being pumped from a well located in Sand Pit, Limon and stored in a large tank near Hone Creek. It is from the storage facility in Hone Creek that the water will be distributed to the six different communities who desperately need the precious commodity; however, they will have to wait. The design is being modified and production has stopped so until the aqueduct is completed at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, residents of these communities must continue to resort to primitive methods to obtain water.

Many residents are extracting the water they need to wash clothes, dishes, and to bathe from their local wells. Every house in the community has a well, some of which are operated manually and some are operated by a motorized pump, however, most of the well water is contaminated and not used for consumption.

Many residents place containers on their patios or in the yard to collect rain water, which lucky for them is abundant this time of year as we are entering the peak of rainy season. Most residents do add a few drops of chlorine to the reciprocals of fresh rainwater in order to ensure that the water is safe to drink, but that is not a fail-proof system.

Evelyn Villalobos, a local housewife in the Hone Creek Community, confirms that she does have a well on her Costa Rica property, however it is without a pump so they have to collect the water they need using a plastic container that holds one gallon at a time.

Villalobos and her two children of three and four years, occasionally visit the nearby river in order to bathe due to the water shortage. Villalobos explains that “some foreign friends give us drinking water sometimes; the water from the well can’t be drunken due to a terrible smell of iron”.

As for purchasing drinking water in the local markets Villalobos explains that she only does so when it is strictly necessary because the bottled water “is very expensive and does not even last a week”. In addition to the obvious inconveniences of having to struggle to obtain drinkable water many locals are suffering from health problems due to the dilemma as well.

Wilman Red Molin, director of the Hone Creek Medical Clinic, explained that “in many houses the well is near the septic tank and contamination is generated. Cases of dengue are diagnosed due to the storage of water”. Molin also adds that many patients present symptoms of parasites and bacterial diarrhea due to consumption of contaminated water.

Molin is confident that if the people of these communities had drinking water, many of these cases could be avoided and his number of patients with these problems would decrease significantly.

According to Ricardo Sancho, the executive president of Aqueducts and Sewer Systems (AyA), the delay in the project is due to issues in the finance department, however, many believe that drinkable water for 12,000 people shouldn’t come with a negotiable price tag, after all water is a necessity not a luxury!

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Filed under: Costa Rica News on August 29th, 2008