Project of rainwater harvesting improves lives in El Salvador
TEPETITÁN, El Salvador: Filling a jug with water to supply her household needs used to be an ordeal for Salvadoran villager Corina Canjura, because it meant walking several kilometres to the river, which took up a great deal of time, or else paying for water.
But an innovative project of rainwater harvesting has changed her life.
“Now we just pump, fill the tank and we have water ready to use,” said the 30-year- old woman from the village of Los Corvera, in the rural municipality of Tepetitán, in El Salvador’s central department of San Vicente.
In this village, 13 families benefit from a system that collects the rainwater that falls on the roof of Canjura’s house, which is then channelled through a pipe into a huge polyethylene bag, with a capacity of 25,000 litres.
From there, it is manually pumped into a tank with a faucet used by all of the families.
“Since it has rained a lot, the bag is always full, which is a joy for us,” Canjura told IPS, while carrying a jug on her head which she had just filled.
“We are the ones who do the housework and have to go looking for water... we are the ones who worry and suffer to find it for our families.” – Lorena Ramirez
The initiative, launched in February 2017, is being promoted by the Global Water Partnership (GWP), which, together with Australian aid and the Ford Foundation, have provided funds to get it going, while local organisations and governments have given operational support.
The system´s technology was developed by the consortium Mexichem Amanco, which entered into the market of polyethylene membranes used as waterproof barriers in civil engineering works, sanitary
We are the ones who do the housework and have to go looking for water... we are the ones who worry and suffer to find it for our families.
Lorena Ramirez
landfills, and artificial lagoons for aquaculture, among other uses.
In 2013, GWP Central America had already promoted a water harvesting project in southern Honduras in communities suffering from drought, and this project is being replicated in El Salvador’s Jiboa Valley.
In this small country of 6.4 million people, eight rainwater harvesting systems have been installed so far in seven municipalities in the Jiboa valley in San Vicente.
There is one in each municipality, except for Jerusalen, located in the department of La Paz, where two systems have been installed.
Of the 323 families identified as having problems of access to water in rural communities in these municipalities, 100 are benefiting directly from the project, conceived of as a pilot plan that would offer lessons for its expansion to other areas.