The contrast between our two visits this week illustrates probably one of the greatest dilemmas for a person working in social justice or environmentalist movements: when are we curing the disease, and when are we just treating the symptoms? On Friday, we visited ECCACIV, a water treatment plant with the motto “It is not just another business, it is a commitment with the environment.” This plant treats mainly the contaminated water from the industrial park north east of Cuernavaca, before it is dumped into a nearby river. The harshest chemical in the entire treatment process is chlorine gas; the rest of the decontamination is done with microorganisms and oxygenation. Unfortunately, this process cannot remove a specific red dye from the textile factory, so that stays in the river and kills the plant life and fish. This red dye does not have any environmental regulations put on it as of yet. Our guide said it was a way in which the government is protecting the textile industry. ECCACIV has asked nicely for the textile factory to stop using that dye, or do some sort of pre-treatment of the water, but (surprisingly) they have not agreed to that.
I think we can all agree that water treatment is good, and that we shouldn’t just dump contaminated water into the river, but what if we didn’t create contaminated water in the first place? On Tuesday, we visited the house of eco-architect César Añorve and heard his opinion on water management. “Sewage is crazy,” he said. With the dry toilet and the bio-filter for soap and other contaminants of household water, he does not need to send his water anywhere to be treated. Nor does contaminated water from his house flow into any of Cuernavaca’s many ravines, which is common for other households.
Obviously, the water issue is not strictly environmental. The social implications of water contamination and especially unequal access to water are blatant in Mexico. The privatization of water, for example, is already in its advanced stages. Making water into a commodity to be bought and sold, a large sector of the population who don’t have the money to buy water is cut off from a necessity of life.
As environmentalists and/or social justice advocates, we need to stop lamenting the state of our world and start acting at the source of its problems. What if instead of funding a project to connect a community to a sewage system, it funded dry toilets, bio-filters and rain water collection tanks? Maybe Bechtel, one of the multinational companies involved in the water business, could take a workshop from Cesar Añorve and still get the contract.
I think we can all agree that water treatment is good, and that we shouldn’t just dump contaminated water into the river, but what if we didn’t create contaminated water in the first place? On Tuesday, we visited the house of eco-architect César Añorve and heard his opinion on water management. “Sewage is crazy,” he said. With the dry toilet and the bio-filter for soap and other contaminants of household water, he does not need to send his water anywhere to be treated. Nor does contaminated water from his house flow into any of Cuernavaca’s many ravines, which is common for other households.
Obviously, the water issue is not strictly environmental. The social implications of water contamination and especially unequal access to water are blatant in Mexico. The privatization of water, for example, is already in its advanced stages. Making water into a commodity to be bought and sold, a large sector of the population who don’t have the money to buy water is cut off from a necessity of life.
As environmentalists and/or social justice advocates, we need to stop lamenting the state of our world and start acting at the source of its problems. What if instead of funding a project to connect a community to a sewage system, it funded dry toilets, bio-filters and rain water collection tanks? Maybe Bechtel, one of the multinational companies involved in the water business, could take a workshop from Cesar Añorve and still get the contract.
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