La Libertad: residents of Hulkán drink cloudy and untreated water

Communities continue to be affected by wondering whether La Libertad will experience rain or drought this year that will hurt water usage.

In the small village of Hulkán, La Libertad, some residents have no drinking water network, and to survive they must collect liquid from springs or muddy puddles, which are dark in color, where they live even when exposed to Seriously polluted, it must also be eaten without treatment.

The problem is exacerbated because, in addition to the drought the region is experiencing, it is said that in the next few months, due to the global El Niño phenomenon, there will be rain in coastal areas and drought in coastal areas. Andes, that is, there will be no seasonal rainfall this year.

While it has not been fully confirmed what impact or consequences this will have, there is a lot of concern about what to expect. People fear the worst and hope that national or regional governments take urgent action in this regard, as cities lack the necessary resources to carry out drinking water projects.

Can you survive without water?

Water is life and the foundation of health. However, the residents of the small village spend Cain’s money to get it and survive. They had to travel long distances to stock up on the liquid in the spring water, which was not fit for drinking but was the only thing they had.

In the village of Yanag in the Calabamba district of Julcan province, residents must fill water in quipe puquial, jugs, buckets or plastic cans and load it on donkeys or mules. The water they collect is cloudy and one has to wait for the water to settle before it can be used for all household chores, even for human consumption.

Residents have asked for their urine samples to be taken to see what would happen if drinking the water was made mandatory due to the lack of drinking water services.

In this regard, District Governor Percy Blas Benitez announced that they are preparing a study on the management of financing of drinking water projects to the Ministry of Housing. “Coordination with decentralized offices in Trujillo has progressed and we are doing terrain studies,” he explained.

Application Project

The project they will detail is expected to provide drinking water to the residents of the villages of Machacala, Sangala, Cachuda, Cambuluara, San Viviano, Santa Rosa and Muchquín. “More than 500 families will benefit from this project, which will use Cerro Quinga as a source of supply,” he said.

Recently, the city government met with the leaders of various villages to address the issue and took action to bring attention to this delicate issue. Most of the 32 small villages in his area have similar water supply problems.

The scarce economic resources of the district commune do not allow it to undertake this task directly, so the authorities must manage the necessary economic resources, but this can only be done through archives or technical archives.

In the case of Yanag, a study conducted by the Microbiology Laboratory on the water consumed by the residents had unfavorable results that the water was not fit for human consumption in the town of La Libertad.

Contaminated water has been linked to the spread of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, roundworms and polio, and can exacerbate stunting and spread antimicrobial resistance.