Given the permanent problems in the piped water service in Los Puertos de Altagracia, in Zulia state, artisanal wells have become one of the alternatives to survive. In this way, the inhabitants have sought their own systems to have water in their homes after a year of living with dry pipes.
For more than a year, water has not reached homes in the Miranda municipality, in Zulia state, through pipes. More than a thousand families in the Altagracia parish have had to dig artisanal wells to, in one way or another, “solve” their day-to-day needs. Inhabitants of areas such as El Calvario, Las Playitas, Alto Viento I and II, El Carmen I and II, El Florido, El Cumbre, La Salina del Sur, Haticos del Sur, Punta de Piedra, among other sectors have had to getting down to work, learning as they go along and digging their own wells, already almost resigned to never receiving piped water again.
Residents of Los Puertos de Altagracia assure that the local government and hydrolake they don’t try hard enough to get the job done and send the potable water service back on. They affirm that for the municipal government it is not so important to reactivate the water service, since the proliferation of artisanal wells has “solved” the problem. However, it is a partial alternative, because not all families have the possibility of making a well and it does not solve the problem for those who do, because these waters cannot be consumed due to the high concentrations of salinity, sodium, iron and mercury.
“A year ago I decided to make my water well, at that time I did not have the money to pay an expert and yet, together with my family and neighbors, we were able to do it,” said Santo Caringi, a resident of the Miranda municipality.
Caringi explained that his well is forty feet deep and he used a 12-inch bit to dig up the dirt to get the water vein. He stressed that the water is sweet but the PH he threw makes it unfit to consume, so he and the whole family use that water only for bathing, washing and watering their plants.
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But not everyone is lucky enough to get fresh water. Most of the wells are soluble water and there are those who, for not having more resources, consume it; what has brought as consequence in the health of the Mirandinos both stomach and kidney diseases.
Alfonso Gerardino has been working in the drilling of artisanal wells in the municipality for more than 15 years. He explained that for each meter drilled the cost is 10 dollars, since most of these wells do not exceed 15 meters, the production of one would cost between 110 and 150 dollars. Gerardino has drilled more than 500 wells throughout the Miranda municipality and has even drilled in the El Tablazo petrochemical company and in the Ciudad Bolívar mines. The period to make a well is one week.
«In 2019 the water crisis began here in the municipality, right after the blackout, so I decided to have my well built, which for those dates cost me 200 dollars. Since then I have helped those who still do not have this solution,” said Héctor Quintero, a resident of Los Puertos de Altagracia who learned to dig wells.
The neighbors have given up the task of learning on their own to make artesian wells to avoid depending on tanker trucks that charge between 20 and 25 dollars. The proliferation has spread to such an extent that in one block of the La Salina del Sur sector there are 15 houses and 11 have their water wells.
Quintero added that making a well is not the solution, mainly because the ground could reach a level of collapse. But given the absolute lack of piped supply, which has lasted a year without reappearing, there are many families who see wells as an alternative, although they forget that the water flows, which are at the same time veins, when they explode, make the earth is weakening. Quintero asks the regional hydrological agency to pay attention to this need to prevent future problems.
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