A concerned group of citizens and civil servants gather regularly to discuss the water news of the day. Today’s news is the large numbers of people who are becoming ill from drinking contaminated tap water; another day the issue is the growing conflicts between rural and urban water users. The place is Riobamba, Ecuador, a city of about 200,000 people where water resources are becoming increasingly scarce and contaminated, but water management is hindered by an absence of adequate information to document the scale of the problem.
Three hours east of Riobamba in the Amazon frontier town of Puyo (population ~30,000 and counting), the mayor and his aides express growing concerns about the city’s lack of wastewater treatment. They hypothesize about the effects that untreated sewage is having on surrounding rivers. Technical studies of water quality and wastewater treatment options for Puyo were needed years ago but are still unavailable.(learn about GLOWS activities in the basin by clicking >> here). Limited information about water quantity and quality is an issue facing water resources managers in many parts of Ecuador. In most cases the funding needed to commission technical studies or hydrologic inventories is not available, meanwhile management decisions to allocate water or to designate it for certain uses still have to be made. Cities in the Pastaza River Basin, in particular Riobamba and Puyo, are exploring new approaches to meet their information needs by partnering with Ecuadorian universities.
With the aid of a local scholarship program created and sponsored by the USAID Global Water for Sustainability program (GLOWS) and Fundación Natura, Ecuadorian students, under the supervision of university professors, are working to fill the gaps in scientific data and technical information needed for sustainable water resources management. The strength of the scholarship program is that it establishes a link between students and those involved in making decisions about water resources management. For example, in Riobamba, the local Water Resources Forum (known as the Foro Hídrico), a group of concerned citizens and civil servants, identified the most pressing data and research needs related to water for the Chambo River which drains Riobamba and a sub-catchment of the larger Pastaza River Basin. Scholarship students develop thesis projects to address these needs and their results will become part of a database for water resources management in the Chambo River sub-Basin. In Puyo, the mayor and aides have asked thesis students to examine alternatives for wastewater treatment for the city’s growing population. Students are collecting data on water quality and current wastewater management practices; upon completion of their studies, they will present the municipal government with some scenarios for wastewater treatment for Puyo.
For water resources managers and municipal governments, the scholarship program facilitates the collection and analysis of much-needed information at virtually no cost. Studies similar to the student theses, if commissioned and done by consultants, could cost thousands of dollars each. For the students, participation in the scholarship program provides an opportunity to gain on-the-ground experience in water resources management in Ecuador and address real problems.
Ten students and two universities (the Escuela Politécnica Nacional in Quito and the Escuela Politécnica de Chimborazo in Riobamba) are currently involved in the program. Thesis studies began in March 2007 and will continue through the end of the year. At the end of the 2007 program, students will gather to present their results to their peers and to local water management authorities. Plans are to involve more students from other Ecuadorian institutions in the coming year and the model is being proposed for expansion to other areas of the country through Fundación Natura.
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