In Zamora Chinchipe, located in Ecuador’s South-East, hundreds of families still depend on rivers and springs for their survival. The lack of drinking water coverage, which in some areas barely reaches 74%, exposes entire communities to health risks and inequality. La Hora has the story.

Although the water that comes out of the tap in María Mendoza’s house is clear and appears clean, the story behind it is one of years of illness and mistrust. A lifelong resident of Santa Rosa, a small neighbourhood in Zamora, María, 65, still remembers the long walks to the Timbara River or the endless waits for the community water tank to be cleaned after heavy rains.

For years, access to clean water was an unattainable luxury for her and her family. Unaware of the risks they faced, they used water that seemed harmless but was laden with bacteria and waste. Little did Maria know that every glass of water she offered her four daughters contained the seeds of constant illness, from persistent diarrhoea to aches and pains that home remedies rarely alleviated. Today, with clean water finally reaching her home, her relief is mixed with the frustration of lost years, accumulated damage and questions she never found the answers to.

“My daughters grew up with constant diarrhoea and stomach aches. They never explained to us why it happened“, she says with a sigh. It is only in the last six years that her neighbourhood has had clean water. And even then, the damage caused by decades of contaminated water remains. For families like María Mendoza’s, the arrival of this basic service is a belated relief, a change that brings hope, but also regret for what can no longer be undone.

María Mendoza, like many of the 1,705 inhabitants of the municipality of Timbara in the province of Zamora Chinchipe, has suffered health problems due to a lack of access to safe water. Although progress has been made on the infrastructure for drinking water systems, she continues to struggle with problems linked to prolonged exposure to contaminated water. Among the most common are gastrointestinal illnesses and the effects of E. coli bacteria.

The National Survey of Chronic Childhood Malnutrition (EDNI) revealed that in Ecuador, 36.7% of children under the age of five consume water contaminated with this bacterium. In Zamora Chinchipe, 6 out of 10 children consume water contaminated with E. coli. This represents 61.7% of the child population.

Lorena Poma, epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Zamora – Yacuambi District, explains that diarrhoea caused by E. coli is directly linked to the consumption of contaminated water:

“The two municipalities of Zamora and Yacuambi do not have 100 per cent coverage of drinking water suitable for human consumption. Often the piping system can be contaminated all the way to the household.”

However, the Ministry of Public Health reports that in 2023, the province’s health facilities saw only two cases of E. coli-related infections in outpatient clinics, despite the population’s high exposure to the bacteria.

In the canton of Zamora, residents get their water from a variety of sources. According to the 2022 census data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census, 74.70% of the population accesses water through the public utility, while 7.52% rely on water boards. Another 1.5 per cent get their water from wells and 16 per cent from other sources such as rivers, springs, ditches, canals, crevices or rainwater.

In the canton of Yacuambi, barely 30% of the population have access to drinking water from the public water company, 39% are supplied by water boards, a worrying 28% use sources such as rivers, springs and canals, and 2% draw water from wells, putting them at greater risk of disease due to contamination.

Poma insists that poor water quality is a determining factor in the diarrhoea that residents of these two cantons, like María Mendoza, have become accustomed to. Between January and July 2024 alone, 99 cases of diarrhoea were registered in minors in both cantons. The health centre in San José de Yacuambi sees between 15 and 20 cases a month.

Diarrhoea can be caused by various bacterial, viral or parasitic infections. The most common causes are exposure to contaminated water, spoiled food or poor hygiene practices. A report on acute diarrhoeal disease (ADI) in the country, covering the period 2017-2022, shows that 590,523 cases of ADI were recorded in 2017 and 14,231 hospital admissions for acute diarrhoea were recorded in 2019. Of these admissions, 28.57% were children aged 0-2 years, 24.68% were children aged 2-4 years and 17.54% were children aged 4-6 years.

Prior to the implementation of the drinking water system in 2018, the residents of the Santa Rosa neighbourhood in the municipality of Timbara organised mingas to build their own system. They faced many challenges: constant interruptions in the supply, sediment build-up and, during the rainy season, cloudy water, which made consumption even more difficult.

When it rained, the tank would get dirty and the water would fill with silt, and there were days when we couldn’t even use it. Families worked together to keep the tank clean, but without the infrastructure, what we drank was a constant worry. I think that’s why our stomachs are weaker now,’ says María Mendoza.

Six years ago, it was common for neighbourhoods in Zamora and Yacuambi to have a storage tank filled with water from nearby sources such as rivers or springs. However, this practice had several drawbacks, including the fact that the water could easily become contaminated with microorganisms, especially during the rainy season.

Luis Jiménez, a farmer in his late 70s, remembers the years when bouts of diarrhoea and stomach pain affected his health, slowed down his daily activities and left him without income, as he had to choose between working, going to a health centre or waiting at home until the stomach pain passed. Between 2005 and 2018, in addition to working in the fields, he was responsible for maintaining and cleaning the water tank that supplied water to families like María Mendoza’s. He was sometimes paid for this work. For this work, she sometimes received a few dollars or was exempted from paying the water tariff.

Sergio Tapia, director of the Empresa Pública de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Zamora (EMPAZ), says that before they installed the drinking water system in the municipality of Timbara, in the canton of Zamora, in 2018, the situation was ‘deplorable’.

‘The tanks and hoses were contaminated with cattle manure and we had a historic problem with water quality, especially during the rainy season,’ says Tapia.

According to the director, heavy rains would fill the water tanks with branches, garbage and other debris washed downstream, resulting in a supply that was not only dirty, but also unsafe for human consumption.

Today, the water distributed in Timbara is safe to drink. Although rainfall continues to be a challenge that we cannot fully control, we have managed to keep the water within acceptable safety parameters,’ says the EMPAZ director.

Water management challenges

Despite the fact that almost 74.70% of the population of the Canton of Zamora has access to drinking water, financial problems continue to delay essential projects. The director of the Empresa Pública Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Zamora (EMAPAZ) points out that although progress has been made, administrative difficulties and a lack of resources are affecting the expansion and maintenance of the drinking water system. He says:

“The mountainous topography and the dispersed nature of the communities make interventions costly. We need financial support to ensure a system that really works.”

He adds that EMAPAZ is a small company with an annual budget of around $700,000, of which 80-85% goes on salaries. The director concludes:

“The government has no resources. The local government is responsible for building the infrastructure, and the rest depends on EMAPAZ.”

I requested an interview with the municipality of Yacuambi, but at the time of writing I had not received a reply. However, according to the transparency reports published on its website, between 2020 and the current year, contracts for drinking water projects have been awarded in places such as Ortega Alto (I Etapa), the municipality of Tutupali and Napurak, with sums of more than $24,000 each, in addition to an investment of $71,694.37 for the construction of several water systems in other municipalities.

In addition, some contracts, such as those for consultancy on environmental action plans, were not awarded. Despite the investments made in accordance with transparency documents, the results have not yet translated into tangible improvements for the population.

In 2022, water quality in Zamora Chinchipe was unevenly distributed among the cantons. While one of them, El Pangui, was in category A (efficient), two were in category B (good), five in category C (acceptable) and one in category D (poor), according to the provincial water quality indicators of the Water Regulation and Control Agency (ARCA) of 15 December 2023.

For the full article (Spanish) with illustrations and maps, see La Hora