While I would never say that Cuba is a perfect government, show me one
that is, still it is interesting that under a Communist form of
government the needs of the people are being cared for, rather than
draining off the people's wealth into the bank accounts of the
corporations?
Carl Jarvis
On 2/26/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Managing Water in CubaWhile I would never say that Cuba is a perfect government, show me one
February 25, 2021
Rain is increasingly scarce on the island and the plan aims to ensure the
availability and efficient use of water to cope with droughts, Luis
Brizuela
reports.
Yayabo River in the central Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus. (Jialiang Gao,
CC
BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons)
By Luis Brizuela
in Havana
Inter Press Service
With the construction of aqueducts, water purification and desalination
plants, and investments to upgrade hydraulic infrastructure, Cuba is
seeking
to manage the impacts of droughts and floods that are intensifying with
climate change.
The “initiative to strengthen hydrological monitoring” in Cuba, signed in
Havana on Feb. 11, aims to boost capacities to measure, transmit, process
and analyze hydrological variables and systematically assess water
availability at the national level.
According to water sector authorities, the modernization and optimization
of
hydrological observation networks will be an essential component of early
warning systems for floods and droughts.
The initiative will be implemented by the National Water Resources
Institute
(INRH), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
and funding from Russia.
It also plans to redesign the observation network for both groundwater and
surface water quality, explained INRH Director of Hydrology and
Hydrogeology
Argelio Fernandez.
The initiative is in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which
calls on governments to ensure availability and sustainable management of
water, as well as sanitation.
It also responds to national policies and priorities contained in “Tarea
Vida,” the government plan in place since 2017 to address climate change.
Among its multiple strategic guidelines, the plan aims to ensure the
availability and efficient use of water to cope with droughts, based on the
application of technologies to save water and meet local demand.
It also urges the optimization of hydraulic infrastructure and its
maintenance, as well as the introduction of actions to measure water
efficiency and productivity.
Pathways for Water
The long, narrow shape of the island of Cuba, the largest in the Cuban
archipelago, means many rivers are short and the water flow is low and
highly dependent on rainfall, more abundant in the May to October wet
season
and during the passage of tropical storms.
Satellite Image of Cuba. (Jacques Descloitres, NASA, Wikimedia Commons)
With average annual rainfall of 1,330 mm, the records show that rains are
increasingly scarce, particularly in the eastern region where the country’s
longest and largest rivers, the Cauto and Toa, respectively, are located.
From 2014 to 2017, the country faced the greatest drought in 115 years,
affecting 70 percent of the national territory.
Studies predict that Cuba’s climate will tend toward less rainfall, higher
temperatures and more intense droughts, and that by 2100 water availability
could be reduced by more than 35 percent.
Another consequence of climate change is that sea levels are projected to
rise, a phenomenon that will aggravate saltwater intrusion, to which 574
human settlements and 263 water supply sources are currently vulnerable,
according to official figures.
Law No. 124 of the Land Water Law has been guiding the integrated and
sustainable management of water since 2017, while the new constitution in
force since April 2019 protects the right of Cubans to drinking water and
sanitation, with due remuneration and rational use.
Since 1959, the government has promoted an ambitious engineering program
for
artificial water reservoirs, to guarantee the water supply for a population
that almost doubled to 11.2 million inhabitants since then, and to promote
plans for industrial development and agricultural irrigation.
The data shows that from just over a dozen small reservoirs six decades
ago,
there are now more than 240 in the 15 provinces and the special
municipality
of Isla de la Juventud – the second largest island in the archipelago –
with
a storage capacity of more than 9 billion cubic metres.
According to the 2020 Statistical Yearbook, more than 95 percent of the
Cuban population has access to drinking water, but only 86.5 percent of the
urban population and 42.2 percent of the rural population receives piped
water at home.
Despite the economic crisis the country has suffered for three decades and
the impact of the U.S. embargo since 1962, in recent years millions of
dollars have been invested to mitigate the water deficit and improve water
quality.
Among the engineering works, the water transfer aqueducts stand out, with
more than a dozen throughout the country, considered strategic pillars in
building resilience to the effects of climate change.
These interconnected systems of dams, canals, aqueducts, tunnels and
bridges
transfer water hundreds of kilometres from places where it is abundant to
agricultural and industrial areas and human settlements.
They also make it possible to control floods, lessen the impact of drought
and allow the siting of hydroelectric power plants.
Cuba has three plants that produce high-density polyethylene pipes 1,200 mm
in diameter for laying new aqueducts and to replace the aging and leaking
hydraulic infrastructure that in some cities is over 100 years old.
High-density polyethylene pipe is laid on a street in the Cuban capital.
(Jorge Luis Baños/IPS)
It also seeks to prioritize the manufacture of fittings and parts for
domestic water supply networks, where almost a quarter of the piped water
is
lost.
Of the total investment in the water system, which in recent years has
averaged more than 400 million pesos (16.5 million dollars) a year, more
than half comes from the government budget for construction and assembly.
The rest comes from international cooperation through projects and funds
from nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan, Spain, France and the
OPEC
Fund for International Development.
Thanks to these investments, in the 2018-2020 period, desalination plants
were inaugurated in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba,
Granma, Guantánamo and the municipality of Isla de la Juventud, in order to
create easy access points in populations affected by high levels of
salinity
in their water supply sources.
Meanwhile, in Camagüey, the third most populated city in Cuba located 538
km
east of the capital, a water treatment plant with a capacity to process
1,800 litres of water per second is nearing completion, which will make it
the largest in the country.
Although the water that reaches most homes is treated and chlorinated,
people remain concerned about the presence of microorganisms or salt that
require boiling.
“It would be useful if shops sold water filters more frequently and at
affordable prices, because they help protect our health,” a Havana
resident,
Yolanda Soler, told IPS.
However, building resilience also involves encouraging a water culture in
the business and private sectors and among citizens as a whole,
hydroeconomics engineer Luis Bruzón, who lives in the western province of
Mayabeque, told IPS in a telephone interview.
“Do we know how much water is used to produce a ton of a given agricultural
or industrial product or to provide a specific service?” asked Bruzón, who
believes that having such data would improve decision-making in a nation
that must increasingly optimize and save water.
This article is from Inter Press Service.
