José Antonio Fornaris, Cuba-Verdad.
HAVANA, June - Near Havana's Central Park, there is a statue of Francisco de
Albear y Lara, the designer of the city's aqueduct built in 1893. The statue is
in the process of being restored; not so his aqueduct.
For decades now the supply of drinking water to Old Havana has wavered from
critical to disastrous. Large areas of what used to lie inside the old city
walls get water every few days.
A usual sight nowadays is residents carrying water in tanks on a
wheelbarrow. Some do it for their own consumption; others to sell. A five-gallon
can, for example, costs between two and five pesos, depending on whether the
buyer lives at ground level or upstairs.
At the corner of Lamparilla and Villegas Streets -when there is water
available, because the whole area doesn't get water at the same time- residents
form long lines bearing all kinds of containers. The line ends at a pipe that
used to provide water to a house long since demolished. The pipe is at ground
level, so people have dug a hole in the pavement around the end of the pipe to
facilitate filling their buckets and cans.
The government provides tanker trucks to alleviate the situation, but the
delivery cycle has a three day backlog. The driver of one of these said that
last Friday he made 18 trips but was only able to fill the cisterns in two
apartment buildings. Gasoline is not always available for this system of
delivery to be dependable.
In several points of the city there are billboards exhorting people not to
waste water. Yet in the Diez de Octubre district alone there are more than 600
leaks visible in public places. There are streets where the water runs freely.
There are leaks that have been waiting years to be repaired.
The water supply problem is aggravated by the deterioration of the sewer
system. Water is contaminated at several points due to leaks in the sewers. The
Havana sewer system was built between 1908 and 1915 for a population of 600,000.
Today, the city houses 2.2 million.
When Albear's aqueduct was finished, it was capable of delivering 200
gallons of water a day to each of Havana's 200,000 inhabitants. There have been
few changes since then. The water now comes from the aquifer instead of from the
Almendares river, and the population is 11 times greater than it was then.
Residents of Havana, especially those in the historic section, will not see a
dependable water supply soon. Whether it rains or shines.
Versión
original en español
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its
contributors. We authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as
long as the source is credited.
| 