Residents in Oaxaca meet water crisis with innovative solutions

One important environmental issue that has received scant attention at Copenhagen is that of access to  - and use of - clean water resources. Water-borne illnesses are a leading cause of death - killing over 2 million people worldwide each year. Continued population growth has also strained the capacity of fresh water reserves to replenish themselves...but water conservationists say shrinking water supplies have more to do with how we use and distribute the vital liquid. Shannon Young takes a look at how some individuals are using household-level solutions to deal with the water crisis in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The greywater treatment system at Tierra del Sol in Oaxaca, Mexico

SHANNON YOUNG: One place to see a greywater treatment system in action is at Tierra del Sol, a permaculture farm located an about hour outside of Oaxaca City. The farm's water technician, Lidia Aguado, takes me up a path towards the communal kitchen. The greywater treatment system is behind it, connected to a PVC pipe that comes out of the wall behind the kitchen sink.

LIDIA AGUADO: "Greywater is that which comes from the sink, the wash basin, the washing machine, the shower and...here we have this water and a grease trap which works as the first filter to separate the grease from the water that we're going to treat."

YOUNG: The grease floats in the first barrel while the grease-free water moves through a pipe to a second barrel. There, screens and gravel remove bits of food and other large particles. That water then goes to a large subdivided square that resembles a checkerboard of gravel, charcoal and plants.

LIDIA AGUADO: "It passes from one chamber to the next, filtering itself more each time. And in those final chambers we have aquatic plants - plants whose roots work to filter the water."

A series of filtration chambers processes waste water at Tierra del Sol in Oaxaca, Mexico

YOUNG: After the filtration chambers, the water goes to a pond where it's stored for irrigation. Or the water can go to a gravel-filled ditch where it either evaporates into the air or seeps into the ground. Lidia says the farm returns all of its greywater to the environment and avoids sewage altogether through the use of composting toilets.

Flush toilets do require huge amounts of fresh water and people who have used them their entire lives are often reluctant - if not unwilling - to explore alternatives.

JUAN JOSE CONSEJO: "I would say the general problem is a problem of social attitude."

YOUNG: Juan Jose Consejo is the Director of the Institute of Nature and Society of Oaxaca, a non-governmental organization that promotes water conservation and alternative technologies. He says using freshwater to dilute and transport bodily waste is destructive and unsustainable.

JUAN JOSE CONSEJO: "We can use dry sanitation...and you would say that's something for the country - in fact, there's techniques to do it, I would say, in a modern way. There are electrical toilets, dry toilets for example. They have been started to be used in Sweden for example...and they don't have problems with water, but they are starting to worry about that problem."

YOUNG: Greywater treatment systems and dry toilets aside, environmentalists say do it yourself water conservation is as simple as harvesting rainwater and reusing greywater to flush toilets. And the pace of the talks in Copenhagen seem to indicate that it's much faster to make changes at a household level than it is to wait for governments to adopt environmentally-friendly policies.  Shannon Young, FSRN, Oaxaca.

For more information:

Tierra del Sol permaculture farm: tierradelsol.com.mx

Institute of Nature and Society of Oaxaca: insooaxaca.com/insoeng.html

Wikipedia on dry toilets: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilets