New Mexico State University
IN-2: Innovation 2

Providing Clean Water to Colonia Residents

People need water every day to survive. Unfortunately, clean water isn’t always available to many people living in undeveloped or underdeveloped areas in Dona Ana and El Paso counties, areas better known locally as colonias. That’s why a researcher from New Mexico State University teamed with colleagues from the University of Texas-El Paso to see what can be done.

“Many people in these areas don’t have access to treated municipal water,” said Rebecca Palacios, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at NMSU. “There is a very high health risk for these people. Some of them dig their own wells, which tend to be shallow and produce contaminated water that isn’t sufficiently filtered.”

She said water contaminants in the region can originate from agricultural areas, industrial areas or even neighboring septic tanks that were not built to code. These contaminants don’t just make water unhealthy for drinking; it can be unhealthy for bathing, too, sometime causing skin rashes and sores. Even boiling the water during cooking won’t remove all contaminants.

This interdisciplinary project has a vision to help residents in colonias get clean water. NMSU researchers had multiple community partners that were vital to the project to recruit the target populations. The partners (community health and utilities agencies) helped find the specific requirements on who researchers needed to serve to bring potable water to the colonias.

In recent years water services have been extended to many regions in the colonias in southern New Mexico, however in 2012 there still remain pockets in Texas and New Mexico that don't have access to public water. The exact locations were difficult to pinpoint and this is where the community partners came into play. The first vital partner was the Lower Rio Grande Water Conservation District who helped the team identify which areas had public water and by process of elimination researchers focused on the areas that didn't have public water.

In these waterless areas, many families in the area couldn’t afford to have wells dug. The Office of the State Engineers helped identify the various wells that existed in the colonias as well as providing the depth of the existing wells and the coordinates of their location. A shallow well is more prone to environmental contamination so knowledge of water table depth was vital. A lot of the water in the area also has arsenic contamination, which added another challenge to this already difficult environmental project.

A second partner that helped recruit the residents that were in need was the Office of Border Health, in particular Paul Dulin and Angie Sanchez, who provided access to “promotoras” or community health workers, who were also residents of the area.

One major lesson learned was the importance of the community needs assessment in identifying not only filtration needs but also educational needs of the community. This project gives each community member a choice of the type of filtration system they want so it is user friendly to their particular needs. One major lesson learned was the importance of the community needs assessment in identifying not only filtration needs but also educational needs of the community. This project gives each community member a choice of the type of filtration system they want so it is user friendly to their particular needs.

A real need the residents of the colonias expressed was that the water in the new filtration system be palatable – they said that if the water doesn’t taste good that they probably won’t be satisfied with their new system.

This exciting project is in its early stages, but already people have the advantage of turning on a faucet and getting fresh pure water. They don’t have to go to the store to buy gallon-bottles of water to take a shower and wash the dishes. The wells will be monitored for a year and follow-up will occur monthly.

The study is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is currently in its first phase where the researchers work with local community health workers, known as promotoras, to conduct focus groups to gain a better understanding of the living and water conditions in these communities which in turn will define the scope of the intervention project. Local water samples will also be tested in this phase to determine what kind of filtration devices will provide the best result.

A powerful lesson learned in this study is that environmental efforts change not just the particular area studied, but it deeply affects peoples lives on different levels, both environmentally and in this case most particularly its social impact.