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Project Summary
Agua Para Todos (Water for All) is a partnership project that combines the efforts of Agua Tuya (a private consortium), SEMAPA (Cochabamba´s Municipal Water Company), Pro Habitat (a Non Profit Foundation) and the Water Committees (a community based movement) so that people in poor suburban areas can have access to low cost potable water.
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Project Description
The main objective of the partnership is to give people from poor suburban areas around de City of Cochabamba-Bolivia access to low cost potable water.
Without the partnership:
- The people of the suburban areas have organized themselves into so called “water committees” and are building their own water systems in an uncoordinated, inefficient way (they lack technical skills and experience)
- SEMAPA (The municipal water company) does not have the investment capacity needed to build secondary water distribution networks and household connections.
Without the partnership SEMAPA will not be able to serve the entire concession area it operates on in the short term.
- AGUA TUYA has been building water distribution systems for the water committees for the past eight years but has not been coordinating its work with SEMAPA. Please refer to: http://aguatuya.com
With the partnership:
- AGUA TUYA will build water systems for the water committees in the suburban areas. Each water distribution system will gather between 100 and 500 household connections (homes). The cost of the construction of these systems will be paid by the users themselves. Thanks to Pro Habitat (Non profit foundation), users pay the cost of the system in monthly payments.
AGUA TUYA, Pro Habitat and SEMAPA have created a course to train each water committee in water system management and maintenance.
- With the partnership, the construction of these systems will be coordinated with SEMAPA so that the Municipal Company can plan ahead where to direct its main water pipelines and consequently optimize its future investments.
- The water committees will then manage their own water distribution systems and will create (with support from AGUA TUYA) small enterprises (SMMEs) for managing and maintaining their systems.
- SEMAPA will soon have new demand for its water. SEMAPA will reach each water committee with a main water line and will wholesale water to each committee at one water-entry point.
The idea behind this is to radically lower the cost of the water to the final user (to about one tenth of the current price) since: a) SEMAPA does not need to invest in building secondary distribution systems b) SEMAPA has one contract with each committee instead of one contract with each user (lower administrative costs).
- The work of the partners should be coordinated through a small technical coordination office that will operate in the areas that are prioritized for the construction of the systems.
What the partnership needs:
- SEMAPA needs access to a long term low interest loan to build the main water lines that will take the water to each water distribution system.
- Creation of a low interest revolving fund. At the present time Pro Habitat offers credit to the water committees at an annual interest rate of 12%, but its funding capacity is limited.
- A small grant for designing the systems (engineering design) and for the training of the water committees and small enterprises that will be created.
- A small grant for creating, printing, etc. teaching materials and producing improved training courses.
- Capital funding (or grant) for creating and starting up a technical office which will coordinate the work between the partners. Once the office is created, it will be self sustained by the projects it will manage.
- Working capital (commercial loan) for AGUA TUYA for increasing commercial operations.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
SEMAPA would like the AGUA PARA TODOS project to build around 15,000 household connections (to serve around 75,000 people) in the next ten years. This accounts for 25% of SEMAPA’s growth goals.
In the following years (starting on 2005) SEMAPA will have great amounts of water coming from a large dam but will lack distribution networks for serving many suburban areas (the quantity of water needed is not a constraint)
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