Tucson, Arizona Wednesday, 10 July 2002
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/20710NogalesWater.html
Photos by Jeffry Scott / Staff
Alma Patricia Velasco fills five-gallon buckets with water from Nogales, Ariz.,
as her son Juan Manuel Lopez, 12, watches.
Nogales, Ariz., is selling water to dry Nogales, Sonora
By Tim Steller
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
NOGALES, Sonora
A hose draped across the border in downtown Nogales is giving drought relief to the tens of thousands of poor people living in shacks around this Mexican border town.
In May, wells in Nogales, Sonora, started going dry, and the city began having trouble offering one of its traditional services - giving away water in some of the poorest neighborhoods.
Crisis arrived in June, when three wells ran dry, stopping the water deliveries to neighborhoods without running water. Even in 14 neighborhoods that have water service, it was limited to as few as two hours a day.
In mid-June, the mayors of the two cities struck a deal. Nogales, Ariz., would attach a fire hose to a hydrant in the United States, string it across the border, and sell water to the city of Nogales, Sonora.
Since June 27, Nogales, Sonora's, eight tanker trucks have been able to resume deliveries to the poor through that arrangement.
Alma Patricia Velasco joked that the water delivered to her home Tuesday was a present, since it arrived on her 32nd birthday. At her house in Colonia Rosarito 2, a hillside neighborhood in eastern Nogales, she filled a large outdoor basin, a washtub and a row of five-gallon jugs from a hose attached to the tanker truck.
"We have to save the dishes from breakfast, lunch and dinner and wash them together," she said.
Velasco limits herself to half of a five-gallon bucket for washing dishes, she said. Each family member gets to use a full five-gallon bucket to bathe, she said.
Water is normally problematic for almost half the estimated 350,000 residents of Nogales, Sonora, a city of steep hills and ravines. Whole neighborhoods of shacks and cinder-block huts have no water service, and service is often sporadic in many other areas of the city where lines are installed.
Where there is no water service, residents typically buy undrinkable water from privately owned tanker trucks at about 10 pesos (around $1) per 55-gallon barrel. The free city deliveries of undrinkable water come only about once a month in the summer.
Potable water costs about 15 pesos per five-gallon jug.
"There are times when the (private) tank truck comes but there's no money," said Colonia Rosarito 2 resident Alva Ramírez as she filled a cistern. "We would like it if they came more often with the water they give away."
The city of Nogales, Sonora, is paying the going rate of $1.80 per 1,000 gallons, said Juan Pablo Guzman, spokesman for the city of Nogales, Arizona. As of Monday, the Arizona city had sold 730,600 gallons, Guzman said.
The sales are only a temporary measure until significant rainfall can refill the aquifers that Nogales, Sonora, uses, said Antonio Guzmán Cárdenas, spokesman for Sonora's water utility.
"We need the rain to be consistent, especially in the mountains," Guzmán Cárdenas said, referring to the nearby ranges that drain into the areas where Nogales, Sonora, has its wells.
The principal sources of water are in the Los Alisos basin, just south of the city, and in the Santa Cruz River basin to the east of the city, he said.
The state water utility is in the midst of a long-term plan to place eight large storage tanks in high points surrounding the city and connect each of them, Guzmán Cárdenas said. Eventually they should provide more consistent water service.
For now, though, poor residents are dependent on creaky old water trucks, private or city-owned, that grind their gears up the dirt slopes to serve them. Jesus González González, the driver who brought water to Colonia Rosarito 2 on Tuesday, had to drive about 20 minutes to reach the neighborhood, then was only able to serve eight homes before the tank ran dry at Alva Ramirez's house. Then he had to drive back to the border to refill with Nogales, Ariz., water.
González González was driving a 2,000-gallon truck, one of the city's five. Another three tanker trucks hold 5,000 gallons of water. When he arrives, he said, residents are usually waiting. "Sometimes they're desperate, often angry, usually pleased."
* Contact reporter Tim Steller at 434-4086 or steller@azstarnet.com.
