Grassroots Initiatives Challenge Water Privatization

24.03.10

by Eric Schwartz- IPO

In the rural farming villages of the El Castillo municipality, in the Meta department south-east of Bogota, the Colombian government has made its presence felt more with war than social programs. In this forgotten corner of the Alto Ariari region, much of the limited social infrastructure that exists was built through the collective efforts of the farmers.

Gilberto Antonio Parra, president of the Alto Ariari Water System Committee, is proud of the water system that his community has built in the village of La Esmeralda. “The water we have, the water system, everything was made by the people here.” Gilberto and the Alto Ariari Water System Committee are working to expand their water system to other villages, and to defend it from attempts to take it out of their hands. “We want [our water system] to remain the property of the communities themselves, not of a private company,” explains Gilberto. The Water System Committee’s initiatives are bringing them up against a water privatization set in motion by some of the most powerful economic and political players in the Meta department.

La Esmeralda and four other villages of the Alto Ariari first set out to build a community water system in 2002, when right-wing paramilitary groups were just beginning a massive invasion of the region. A municipal civil servant named Miguel Angel Cano arranged for the municipal government to provide the communities with some technical support and materials. The farmers of La Esmeralda had already put in place their water system when in 2003 the paramilitaries forcibly “disappeared” Miguel Angel Cano. With Cano’s death, plans to extend the system to other villages came to a sudden halt. By 2004, terrified villagers had been forced to abandon farms villages across the Alto Ariari.

When they returned to their land in 2006, those farmers in the four villages that hadn’t managed to set up their water systems before the paramilitary attack were left to make do the best they could. A farmer leader from La Cima, one of the five villages that make up the Water System Committee, explains that in this village, each family “brings the water from the stream. [Either] we use a hose, or in my case, I have to carry it [in buckets] on my shoulder.” This lack of potable water contributes to higher rates of stomach parasites and other preventable illnesses among the villagers of La Cima, as well as the more than 16 million others in Colombia who lack clean drinking water.¹

Working with the new community organization Acari, the Water System Committee is reviving the long-delayed plans to bring clean drinking water to La Cima and other villages. Community leaders are convinced that in order to guarantee access for all, the expanded water system must be public, and run by the communities themselves. Rubi Castaño, local leader from the Alto Ariari region, argues that “we don’t want to become beggars” for the water that belongs to the farmers. After all, she points out, the water used by the entire Alto Ariari comes from streams that are born in villages like La Cima and La Esmeralda. If the small farmers were kicked out and their land were taken over for oil drilling or large-scale mining, the quality of drinking water would be severely compromised for both city dwellers and farmers. Gilberto, president of the Water System Committee, insists that “water is a right. Without water, we wouldn’t live.”

Photo: Eric Schwartz – IPO

Unfortunately, the municipal government of El Castillo, administrative center of the villages participating in the Water System Committee, has other plans for the villages. The El Castillo government has announced plans to install a water system in which every house would have a meter, and access would be limited by ability to pay. The system would be built and administered under the oversight of the semi-public departmental water and sewage company Edesa, with public money from El Castillo tax coffers.

Until recently, the municipal government directly administered the few water systems that existed in El Castillo, mostly in urban areas. Public servants were, at least in theory and occasionally in practice, accountable to residents for the quality of service provided. Two years ago, though, the municipal government contracted its water system out to Edesa. The contract with Edesa was unsuccessfully challenged by a general strike in the municipal center of El Castillo. Residents opposed what they called the first steps toward the privatization of their water.
The members of the Water System Committee believe that if the Edesa-run water system is installed in their villages, rates will gradually increase. Amparo Ferreira, president of the Ariari Women’s Dreams Association and participant in the general strike against Edesa, denounces that rates have already begun to creep up since Edesa took over in central El Castillo. Amparo and the Water System Committee fear that rates could skyrocket if Edesa is privatized further. The history of Edesa shows that privatization is more than a remote possibility.

Former Meta governor Luis Carlos Torres created Edesa in 2003, as a public body that would create and manage water and sewage systems in municipalities across the Meta department. Five years later, the Colombian Inspector General’s Office ruled that Edesa and other newly created public entities “did not have experience in the contracted activities.”^2^ The Inspector General’s Office found that ex-governor Torres and his successor, Edilberto Castro, had used Edesa and the other government agencies to get around government contracting rules. Edesa was apparently formed to grant juicy contracts to the two governors’ former cronies, without the oversight they would have faced for contracts directly with the Meta government.³ Among the private companies that stood to benefit from Edesa’s contracts was Bioagrícola del Llano, the private company owned by former governor Edilberto Castro. Bioagrícola currently runs the public sanitation service in the Meta departmental capital, Villavicencio. Both former governors were banned from public office for ten years.

The rural villages of the Alto Ariari have no way of knowing whether their Edesa-managed water system would be installed by Edesa directly, or sub-contracted out to a private company. A quick glance at the Edesa web site shows that Edesa is still offering contracts to private companies for jobs ranging from improving water treatment plants to installing water systems. What’s more, Edesa itself was created by and for some of the politicians who directly supported the paramilitary groups that killed and tortured farmers in La Esmeralda, La Cima, and other villages of the Alto Ariari. Former Governor Edilberto Castro was sentenced to forty years in prison by the Colombian Supreme Court in 2007, for corruption and collaboration with paramilitaries.⁴ The Court found that while governor, Castro had enriched himself with fraudulent contracts using the Meta administrative body responsible for government contracting. The Court also ruled Castro guilty of conspiring with Miguel Arroyave, leader of the paramilitary group that drove farmers off their land in the Alto Ariari. Castro arranged for Arroyave to kill three of his political adversaries in 2004, including his opponent in the previous elections and former Meta Assembly member Nubia Sánchez, who had denounced Castro’s corrupt dealings.⁵

Whether the proposed pay-for-service water system in rural Alto Ariari were installed by Edesa or by a private subcontractor, Edesa would most likely administer the system. For the time being, Edesa remains a semi-public company. But that could easily change. Since Edesa was formed as a joint stock company, “It is susceptible to being privatized like they’ve done with other companies that are publicly owned, and that end up… as private companies,” argues Enrique Galán of the NGO Ecofondo. “There is the threat that at any moment, they could issue stocks..at a stock exchange,” says Galán. “They could sell [the stocks] to anyone who wanted to buy them.” In the past two decades, an accelerating wave of privatizations has taken essential social services from electricity to telephones to health care out of public control in Colombia. International corporations with capital to invest are eager to grab up lucrative contracts for water delivery. Public water companies like Edesa, which operate as a monopoly and provide a service that users can’t do without, are golden opportunities for multinationals. Social movements in Argentina and Bolivia have denounced that after multinationals such as Bechtel and Suez bought up public water companies, access to water in poor communities has suffered and rates have risen dramatically.⁶

The Alto Ariari Water System Committee’s fight to keep a privatized Edesa from taking over their water is just one of many grassroots initiatives in Colombia that are proposing and creating alternatives to water privatization. The National Committee in Defense of Water and Life, composed of more than sixty organizations, has gathered over two million signatures for a national referendum to define clean drinking water as a fundamental human right.⁷ The referendum would prohibit the privatization of water systems, as well as guaranteeing a free minimum amount of water “necessary for life” to each family. It would also define the water from streams that begin and end on a single farm as a public good, thus challenging large landowners’ extreme control over land and water resources.

Community Water System. Photo: David Moreno, Prensa Rural

Only 100 kilometers from the village of La Esperanza, there are already nearly sixty community water systems in place in poor neighborhoods of Meta’s departmental capital Villavicencio. These water systems were built by the founders of their neighborhoods over forty years ago, and have been administered by local residents ever since. Nationally, there are over 10,000 community water systems in Colombia, mostly in rural areas.⁸ In many villages in inaccessible regions originally settled by displaced farmers, like the Alto Ariari and the Magdalena Medio regions, government neglect has led village committees to organize the construction and maintenance of local water systems. Although these community water systems are often neglected or pressured to privatize by local governments, they are protected under Colombian law.⁹ According to Jaime Wilches, president of the Orinoquía Water Initiative, Colombian law establishes that “the communities themselves can form an association and register at the Chamber of Commerce in order to build their community water system.”

Enrique Galán, of the NGO Ecofondo, also believes that community water systems offer farming villages in the Alto Ariari a valuable alternative to accepting privatized or soon-to-be-privatized central water systems. Using an example close to home, Galán points out that the neighborhood water systems in Villavicencio provide better rates and service than the central water system run by Edesa. Galán says that community water systems like those in La Esmeralda and working class neighborhoods of Villavicencio are the “historical and social heritage of those communities.” Rubi Castaño, a local leader from the Alto Ariari, insists that farmers in the Alto Ariari will continue to defend their villages’ “collective autonomy to create water systems for the communities without the municipalities privatizing them.”

In those areas of Colombia where there is no public water system and independent systems do not exist, things are often even worse. According to Jaime Wilches, of Orinoquía Water Initiative, those that are lucky enough to have potable water are often forced to go without other basic necessities as a result. He explains that privatization of basic resources “harms [poor communities] and afterward they don´t have money to eat or to study, because all their resources go to pay for public services.” To avoid this fate, the farmers of the Alto Ariari are working to preserve and expand their independent water system. As Hernán Darío Correa of Ecofondo argues, “community water systems become an opportunity… to defeat the dominant tendencies and politics of water, and to construct an alternative national water policy.” ¹⁰

ENDNOTES
1. Defensoría del Pueblo. “Tercer diagnóstico sobre calidad de agua para consumo humano.” 2007, p. 35. http://www.defensoria.org.co/red/anexos/pdf/02/informe_136.pdf
2. Procuraduría General de Colombia. “Procuraduría formuló pliego de cargos contra ex gobernador del Meta.” September 2, 2006. www.procuraduria.gov.co/html/noticias_2006/noticias_315.htm
3. El Tiempo. “La autoría intelectual de tres homicidios por parte del ex gobernador del Meta oculta un novelesco relato.” September 9, 2007. http://www.semana.com/noticias-on-line/autoria-intelectual-tres-homicidios-parte-del-ex-gobernador-del-meta-oculta-novelesco-relato/107608.aspx
El Tiempo. “Con entidades del Estado de fachada se embolataron 50 mil millones de pesos en el Meta.” http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/2008-06-25/con-entidades-del-estado-de-fachada-se-embolataron-50-mil-millones-de-pesos-en-el-meta_4345595-1
4. El Tiempo. “La autoría intelectual de tres homicidios por parte del ex gobernador del Meta oculta un novelesco relato.” September 9, 2007.
5. Edilberto Castro was granted home detention in July 2009, less than two years after his sentencing. El Espectador. “Edilberto Castro salió de prisión a pesar de ser condenado a 40 años.” August 21, 2009.
6. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. “Water Privatization.” January 2004.
Jim Shultz. Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “World Bank Forced Water Privatization On Cochabamba.” July 15, 2000.
7. Comité Nacional en defensa del Agua  y de la Vida. “Todos a firmar el referendo por el agua.” http://aguaplaneta.blogspot.com/2007/04/lanzado-el-referendo-por-el-agua-en.html
8. Hernán Darío Correa. “Acueductos comunitarios, patrimonio público y movimientos sociales.” http://agua.ecofondo.org.co/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=59&func=fileinfo&id=44
9. Ecofondo. Revista Número 28/29. September 2006. http://www.semillas.org.co/sitio.shtml?apc=w1-1—&x=20154541
10. Hernán Darío Correa. “Acueductos comunitarios, patrimonio público y movimientos sociales.” http://agua.ecofondo.org.co/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=59&func=fileinfo&id=44

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