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The municipal water company, a private consortium, the local community and a
non-profit foundation form an entrepreneurial partnership to greatly extend access
to affordable water in peri-urban areas of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
In the suburban areas of Cochabamba, Bolivia, the
municipal water company, SEMAPA, lacks the finance
to build secondary water distribution networks, leaving
hundreds of homes without a connection to the
main water supply. In response, local communities
have organized themselves into “Water Committees”,
but their attempts to build their own water networks
have taken place in an uncoordinated, inefficient way.
Agua Tuya/PLASTIFORTE, a private consortium, has
been manufacturing pipes and building water distribution
systems for the Water Committees for the past
eight years, but the work has not been coordinated
with the water company.
The Agua Para Todos initiative takes the pieces of the
puzzle and recombines them in an innovative partnership
model. By combining its partners’ resources,
the partnership overcomes the problem of the prohibitive
costs of new secondary water connections,
and reduces end-user water cost. Further, by embedding
the participation of the people directly in water
provision, the partnership creates socio-political stability
in an area known previously for its volatility.
Agua Tuya/PLASTIFORTE will construct secondary
water systems on behalf of the Water Committees,
while coordinating with SEMAPA so that it may plan
where to direct its main water pipelines. The Pro
Habitat foundation will provide a loan to each Water
Committee to finance the cost of construction, which
they will then repay in twelve monthly payments.
Each system (comprising 100 – 500 households)
requires a single main water entry point. SEMAPA can
connect its network to this point, and sell water in
bulk through one contract with the Water Committee
rather than a contract with each household. Since
the Water Committees themselves own the secondary
distribution system, this results in a radical reduction
in the cost of water to the end user.
Three out of five pilot systems have been completed
as of March 2005, benefiting over 3000 people and
halving the unit cost of water. Once the municipal
water supply connects this sub-network to its main
pipeline, the cost will be further reduced to just onetenth
of the original price per cubic meter.
Press coverage
Project to provide water to 120 families inaugurated in the Barrios Unidos zone
Los Tiempos, 20th December 2004
