Water for Nueva Suyapa
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Local Changes

When AJS first got involved in Nueva Suyapa, one of the poorest communities in the capital city of Honduras, clean water--one of the essentials of life--was arriving only once every 30-40 days. As a result, many people in Nueva Suyapa were forced to spend up to 20% of their already inadequate income on buying water by the gallon, or worse, turn to the contaminated river for bathing, cooking, and even drinking.

The Association for a More Just Society's Honduran partner organization, ASJ, together with the residents of Nueva Suyapa and a newly elected community water board, worked hard to change this situation. By improving the administration and distribution of the water on a local level and making much needed technical repairs, the water board was able to provide the community with twice as much water as they had been getting!

People use whatever they have on hand to store the water that comes only once or twice a month for a few hours.

Prayer and Lobbying

The moment arrived, however, when ASJ and people in the community had done all they could locally, and the people of Nueva Suyapa were still receiving water only every 12-15 days for a few hours (though that was an enormous improvement over every 30-40 days!). Wealthy communities in Tegucigalpa receive water just about every day, for more than 10 hours per day. Even middle class communities get water at least every other day, even during the dry season. The fact that the wealthy were receiving more water at a lower cost while the poor were forced to go thirsty was simply not right. ASJ and community leaders decided that the time had come to go directly to the national water company (SANAA) and petition for more hours of water. On September 2, 2002, representatives from churches, schools, community boards, health clinics, and other individuals from the community met with SANAA to present their requests for more water for Nueva Suyapa.

That same day, Revistazo.com, ASJ's investigative virtual magazine, came out with a complete edition in Spanish dedicated to the water problems in Nueva Suyapa. It was advertised on the two most popular radio stations.

Before the meeting, representatives of four of Nueva Suyapa's churches (3 Protestant and 1 Catholic) held a prayer meeting with the committee that would be going to SANAA (national water company). This was exciting and unusual because community demands are seldom prefaced with prayer, and it is also unusual for Protestants and Catholics to meet and pray together.

Upon arrival at the SANAA, the committee met with a sub-director, who received them warmly and said their demands seemed reasonable but that SANAA would need a week to study them.

And so negotiations with SANAA began--in good faith and covered in prayer. SANAA delivered the blueprints of Nueva Suyapa's water system (the local administration in charge of repairs didn't have access to these before), in response to one of the five community demands. Unfortunately, no radio or newspapers ran stories about the situation, despite the fact that ASJ issued a press report and contacted friends in these media sources asking them to cover the story. We believe that journalists were afraid of negative consequences of covering a story that reflects negatively on the government and the SANAA director who is a politically powerful individual. On a more positive note, North American supporters of the Association for a More Just Society (AJS) came through for us by sending emails to the director of SANAA asking him to listen to the demands of the community.

For a month and a half, SANAA and representatives of Nueva Suyapa (including ASJ) had weekly meetings to work out a fair agreement. A group of people from Suyapa, specifically church leaders, came along for the meetings to pray and to lend their support for the negotiating committee.

In addition to the meetings with SANAA, ASJ has carried out other activities to inform the community about the negotiations and to keep pressure on SANAA. ASJ eventually got a national newspaper to dedicate ¼ page to the case. ASJ also did a multimedia presentation to over 100 people in the community, handed out over 1000 flyers describing the progress, and visited churches and community boards.

Success

Finally, after a year of work, SANAA agreed to nearly all of the community's and ASJ' proposals. SANAA has agreed to:
1) pump an average of at least 10 hours a day of water to the community (up from 5 currently)
2) donate half and finance the rest of the pipe needed to greatly improve the distribution network
3) assign a water engineer to work with the community
4) facilitate all the plans for the water system.

We estimated that all of these changes together will allow each house in Nueva Suyapa to receive water at least twice a week--up from what was originally once every 30 to 40 days.

What this means for everyday life for the 30,000 residents of Nueva Suyapa is very exciting--it means less illness, it means more money for food and other needs, it means being able to have clean kids and clothes. Give thanks with us for this step towards a more just water distribution in Honduras.

And then a Set-back

Within a few months, water service in Nueva Suyapa got worse again. Continual leaks, and the time it takes to mend them, has reduced the service to about once every two weeks. It seems that the pressure of the improved water service is too much for this very poor quality system. ASJ, continuing to work closely with the local water board, brought back the engineer to do another study of the system to identify what repairs and replacements would be necessary. Right now we are giving the water board some time to figure out how they want to address the problem. However, we maintain that the Honduran Water Authority has the ultimate responsibility for repairing these problems, since they are the ones who installed the shoddy system in the first place. Nonetheless, ASJ is firm in it's commitment to partner with the community of Nueva Suyapa until the water system is permanantly and sustainably able to meet the residents' needs.

Latest News: A New Water Board

Elections for the new Water Board were originally scheduled for Fall of 2003, but they were pushed back again and again for the lack of enough candidates and organizational misunderstandings with the Water Authority. ASJ worked diligently during those months to recruit qualified candidates and to smooth out coordination with the Water Authority.

Then, in February 2004, the election finally took place. Three tickets ran--a group from the evangelical churches, a group from the Catholic parish and a group of political activists from one of the major political parties. ASJ helped coordinate the election to make sure it was conducted fairly throughout the entire process, including the campaign period before the vote. Voter turn-out was higher than anyone had expected and the group from the Catholic parish was elected by a wide margin. This group was generally recognized within the community for consisting of very honest, hard-working people.

The turn-over to the new Board has now been completed and they are picking up where the old board left off in improving management of the water system and continuing negotiations with the Water Authority.

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