Just Water Allocation in the Dulcepamba Watershed
Current Reflections - October 2016
Update from our newest team member, Emily Conrad:
Several months ago, I made the decision to quit my job in Washington, DC and join my sister, Rachel, and the Dulcepamba Water Justice team in Bolivár, Ecuador… and here I am! The last two weeks in Ecuador have reinforced that coming here was one of the very best decisions of my life.
Firstly, I continue to be impressed with all that the Dulcepamba Water Justice team has done here:
Rachel and the team (Darwin Paredes, Ian Reichardt, Manuel Trujillo, Beatriz Stambuk, Danillo Paredes, and Julio Sardan) have collected an impressive amount of hydrological, meteorological, agricultural, and socioeconomic data over the past three years. They collected the data during many long days standing in Andean streams and rivers, taking hundreds of GPS points in bean fields and orange groves, continuously troubleshooting issues with the weather stations, and surveying families in every village and census sector in the Dulcepamba watershed. Although higher-tech equipment would have made data collection significantly less time-consuming, there is really no quick or easy way to collect these kinds of data, which makes them incredibly valuable.
I am coming in at an exciting time when we have much of the data we need to inform the legal cases, government advocacy, flood risk mitigation, and land/water use planning that the Project has been working towards for years. Although we continue to measure stream flows, troubleshoot issues with the weather stations, and collect more information from the residents here, it is easier and less daunting than I am sure it was three years ago.
Additionally, the team has built a large community of supporters here in Ecuador. Everywhere we go here the team is warmly greeted by everyone from farmers in rural villages to local and state politicians. They have done (and continue to do) an excellent job educating everyone on what the Project is all about, so even the people in the most remote villages are fairly well informed.
Now I would be amiss if I did not mention that not everyone totally understands or appreciates what the team is doing… but I’ll explain more about that later.
Lastly, on a more personal note, Rachel has paved the way for me as a life-long vegetarian. She has educated everyone from rural farming families to restaurant chefs about what it means to be a vegetarian. There is no all encompassing word in Spanish for ‘meat’ the way there is in English, so she has had to explain that "being a vegetarian means not eating: red meat, poultry, chicken broth, fish, shellfish… any animal that
Rachel in the upper part of the Dulcepamba watershed
once lived and breathed”. When people ask why we don’t eat these things, the most effective way of getting the point across is “we’re allergic”. But Rachel has also had more lengthy conversations with people about the health and environmental impacts especially of factory-farmed meat (which they don’t have here in Bolivár).
The team from left to right: Ian Reichhardt, Sissi Pastor (not a team member, but a huge supporter), Rachel Conrad, Emily Conrad, Darwin Paredes
I found a friend in El Parque Metropolitano in Quito
When I got here, we wasted no time and hit the ground running!
We spent my first few days in Quito, where we rent two rooms in the home of a good friend, Sissi Pastor. We held a half-day workshop with the team on Project goals, new operating procedures, and next steps. I introduced the team to Asana, a project management software program we use to keep track of our various projects and tasks, and established regular check-in meetings three times a week.
As you can see, we are working on a lot of things (and the hills are bigger here), so I won’t elaborate on our progress on all our goals…but I do want to highlight four recent wins:
We also finished preparing the paperwork for a community-level water adjudication for 134 residents of the town of Santa Rosa de Cerritos. We will be presenting their application to the National Secretariat of water (SENAGUA) on Monday.
Rachel in our Water Adjudications office in Chillanes
1. We opened our water adjudication office
The Mayor of Cantón Chillanes (the county where the majority of the Dulcepamba watershed is located) has given us an office in his building where we can help farmers through the process of applying for their water adjudications. It has taken some time to get all the paperwork for the office through, but we opened our doors on Monday and have started a campaign to encourage farmers to visit us and take advantage of our services. Our office is open from 9am-5pm Mondays and Tuesdays.
Darwin and Rachel writing water adjudication applications in our home office
2. We have generated enough data to contest the insufficient environmental flow
Hidrotambo (the hydroelectric company) diverts most of the water that runs down the Dulcepamba River into tubes that flow to their turbines to generate electricity (see diagram below). By law, they must leave a specified minimum amount of water to run freely past the dam called the “environmental flow”. The team has suspected for the past year now that they have not left the required amount, since during the dry season the environmental flow is reduced to barely more than a trickle. So, twice a month we have measured the stream flow above the diversion for the dam, right below the diversion, and then right before the diverted flow re-enters the riverbed. (see diagram below)
The team has now taken enough of these measurements over the past year to submit a well-founded follow-up complaint to the Ministry of the Environment about the insufficient environmental flow allowance.
The Hidrotambo hydroelectric project is a “run of the river” dam, as shown in this diagram. In order to quantify the amount of water left in the channel for the environmental flow, we measure in three places.
Rachel taking measurements at the top of the environmental flow (Measurement 2)
Darwin and Rachel measuring the Dulcepamba River above the diversion for the dam (Measurement 1)
Darwin checking for cell service at our weather station in Sanabanan
3. All of the weather stations are now in working order
Three years ago, the team installed four weather stations with the help of the University of Maryland Plant Sciences Department. The weather stations are placed in representative micro-climates across the watershed and collect: temperature and relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and solar radiation. They take reads every five minutes and then send the data via cellular telemetry to a cloud-based database.
Unfortunately, the weather stations seem to need attention on a fairly regular basis, but we have now gotten all of them to a place where they are reliably collecting data again.
Rachel and Darwin fixing our weather station in San Pablo de Amali
4. We are expanding the benefits we offer to the San Pablo de Amalí community
One of our goals is to connected more intimately with the community we live in (San Pablo de Amalí), and offer more support to our neighbors and friends there.
Firstly, we are helping the teacher, Marcela, at the elementary school. Marcela is both superhuman and totally overwhelmed; She is the sole teacher for 29 students ranging from first through sixth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.
Marcela is always cheery, never complains and does a fantastic job, but we realize a little help could go a long way for her. So, we have started teaching English lessons to the 5th and 6th graders on Wednesdays. Yesterday we taught the 5th and 6th graders greetings, fruits, parts of the body, and words associated with soccer (their favorite). We also painted the school bathroom.
San Pablo de Amali - The school is the white and peach colored building facing the volleyball and soccer fields
Our bathroom mural in the elementary school in San Pablo de Amali
All in all, things are going well here!
Certainly not everything has gone as planned: we forgot the house and office keys in Quito (8 hours away), Darwin got kidney stones, and our car reliability continues to be tenuous; but I feel really good about the things we have gotten done even in the last two weeks, and feel that we are generally on track!
We plan to send at least one of these updates each month. Let us know if there is anything we are doing or experiencing that you are interested in learning more about. Also, please keep us updated on your lives as well.
And… whatever you do… come November 8th, please VOTE!
Over and out,
Emily and the Dulcepamba Team
Another idea we have to improve the community is to raise money to purchase two washing machines and create a community run laundromat. This would be incredibly valuable, especially to the women of the community, who spend much of their time washing clothes by hand. We’ll update you once we have looked into this more.
Washing clothes by hand is only fun the first time...