Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink! Amazon Amigos and the Peruvian non-profit, CONAPAC, continue its partnership by bringing clean drinking water to the Amazon rainforest basin in Peru. Since 2008 when the first water plant was built, CONAPAC, with help from donors around the world, has built 28 community systems in small jungle villages along the Amazon and Napo Rivers. So far we’ve provided access to clean drinking water to over 5,000 people with a goal to double that by the year 2015. We now build concrete water towers—a vast improvement over wood. Although more expensive, they are far and away the best option for the harsh environment of the rainforest and we anticipate many years of service to the prospective communities.
We continue our partnership with the University of Colorado. Graduate students from the university arrived this month. They will once again spend a month in Iquitos and the jungle reviewing our water program, reporting on usage rates, testing water quality and offering up their valuable insights on how we can improve the program. This is the fourth year a team from the university has assisted us in this manner. The yearly recommendations they offer each year have had a profoundly positive impact on how our program operates. We have one more year to go with this current partnership. This year we’re laying the ground work for a yearlong pilot program. This project will add more operator training, small stores more conveniently located in the jungle in which to buy supplies, and create a network of local water technicians who can regularly check water plants for problems which need to be addressed. Full results will be in next year. In the meantime, we continue to look for more interested communities to participate in the program and find ways to make our water program as sustainable as possible. For more information contact us at info@CONAPAC.org
Written by Sintia Smith Snyder
AAS & Special Project Coordinator
Iquitos, Perú