Living at Water’s Edge in Tijuana : Residents Must Mold Their Existence to Fragile Supply

Fausto Matus bounced his timeworn red Chevy truck down the steep dirt tracks of the city neighborhood known as Lomas Taurinas, or Bull Hills, signaling his presence with a confident honk of the horn.

The labored arrival of the battered, lunging vehicle, water cascading from the open spout hole on top of its tank, was a welcome sight for some. For others, it served as a cursed reminder of an unfortunate and seemingly intractable predicament.

“It’s about time,” declared one woman, preoccupied, she later explained, about how she was to wash clothes and dishes for her family of 11.

Matus parked his truck, opened a rear valve regulating the flow from its cylindrical tank and began to dispense water via an elephant trunk of a hose into 55-gallon drums positioned outside the woman’s simple home.

500 Water Trucks

Matus is a water-truck driver, one of more than 500 who serve as a critical link in the capricious and often-maddening water-supply chain of this border city. The colonia (neighborhood) known as Bull Hills, near the Tijuana airport, is one of dozens of communities here where there is minimal or no plumbing, and residents are dependent on the whims of private suppliers for the precious liquid.

The truck delivery is one small scene from a drama that unfolds daily in Tijuana. That’s because water, a given for most U. S. residents, is seldom taken for granted south of the border--a point that was illustrated most dramatically last month when the principal aqueduct here ruptured, raising the specter of a health crisis and leading to an emergency international water lend-lease effort from San Diego.

Running Water a Luxury

While Americans count on more or less constant supplies of potable water from their home faucets, residents of Tijuana and other areas of Mexico learn to mold their lives to the unreliable nature of local supplies. Very few areas of Tijuana receive running water 24 hours a day.

And, for the hundreds of thousands not hooked up to plumbing--perhaps one-third of the city’s more than 1 million residents, no one really knows for sure--obtaining water means buying it from private firms, whose supplies are themselves unreliable and whose prices,

although nominally controlled by the government, are constant sources of irritation.

While water conservation often seems a distant notion in the United States, involuntary conservation is a longtime fact of life here. Stiff fines are in effect for anyone caught washing cars orhosing down their patios or sidewalks. San Diego, a city with a somewhat smaller population than Tijuana, uses as much as 220 million gallons of water a day--more than five times the estimated 42 million gallons expended daily in Tijuana.

“That’s all they can get,” explained Milon Mills, water utilities director in San Diego.

Because of its scarcity, hardly anything inflames passions here as much as water--its supply, its use, its distribution and its price.

Probably more than anything else, the differing views of water in Tijuana and San Diego, two neighboring, semidesert cities, illustrates the contrasts inherent in life along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Promises But No Water

“Rateros! Thieves! No one wants to give us water!” fumed Carmen Garcia, a resident of a farflung colonia that has no plumbing and limited electricity, as she and others from similarly afflicted neighborhoods left the state government offices here last week, once again frustrated in their efforts to acquire service for their communities. “All we get is promises!”

Water is forever a volatile issue. Politicians vow that, if elected, vast areas of the city will receive service, promises that more often than not are never realized. During campaigns, such as the current race for the governor’s seat of Baja California, the ruling party pays truckers to deliver free water to selected neighborhoods--a not-so-subtle, some say cynical, method of buying influence.

Because of the irregularity of water supplies, people here have to improvise, relying on the patchwork delivery system and alternative methods of water delivery.

In fact, most homes and businesses here have private water tanks, which are used to stockpile supplies for day or weeks at a time in anticipation of breakdowns and shortages. The tanks can range from elaborate, almost swimming-pool-sized cisterns such as those found at hotels and large restaurants, to the 55-gallon drums that sit outside many homes, particularly in the poorer quarters where there is no functioning plumbing.

Compounding the water problems is pollution from sewage. Outhouses are prevalent, and their flows of renegade wastes have polluted sundry wells, arroyos and rivers. The Tijuana River is composed largely of wastes by the time it enters the United States in southern San Diego County.

On a recent afternoon, three young members of the Jimenez Calzada family were found washing clothes in a fetid stream that bisects the Bull Hills neighborhood. “We have no choice sometimes but to use the arroyo,” explained Herminia Rodriguez, a 28-year-old mother of four, a native of southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state whose home is perched on a cliff above the stream. “The water’s so filthy, I know the children get sick from it.”

On the same afternoon, a few miles away, Arturo Ortiz, manager of the fancy Reno restaurant downtown, was overseeing the delivery of water to the eatery’s underground cistern. “There was no water last night, so I’ve got to buy it,” Ortiz explained as the water delivery man hooked up his hose to the 1,000-gallon tank atop the truck.

Purity Questionable

Although the publicly delivered water is treated, officials advise people not to drink it, as the efficacy of the treatment system is questionable and the pipes themselves carry varying amounts of sediment. The water delivered by tank trucks, originating from city wells, is definitely not potable. Many commercial establishments have installed water purifiers and elaborate filtering systems, but few residents can afford such luxuries.

Hence the booming industry of the garafoneros, truckers who deliver drinking water, usually from wells near Tecate, to all corners of the city. The drinking water comes in five-gallon glass or plastic bottles known as garafones. Although supposedly purified, complaints abound about the quality of the bottled water, and most everyone willingly relates tales of finding sundry flora, fauna and other foreign substances inside the 5-gallon jugs, which cost between 40-50 cents. (A 55-gallon drum of the non-drinking water costs slightly more than $1.) Some choose to purchase bottled water on the U.S. side at a higher cost.

The hundreds of water-tank trucks known as pipas and the drinking-water garafoneros that crisscross the city at all hours of the day and night make up a lifeline-on-wheels for the city, although their relationship with residents remains a love-hate one.

Businessmen being what they are, competition is often intense among the water-delivery firms, and, in times of low sales, there are occasional disputes about territories. The water deliverymen are most everyone’s favorite target here, constantly bombarded with allegations of overcharging, not delivering sufficient water, ignoring certain hard-to-reach neighborhoods and the like.

Problem on Hillsides

“My street is so steep, the trucks never want to climb up, and we’re always left without water,” said Carmen Carrillo, a 62-year-old grandmother who resides on an almost-vertical incline in the Bull Hills area.

“They should nationalize the whole damn water system!” grumbled Miguel Gomez Lopez, an upholsterer who lives near the Tijuana River and who went out of his way to approach a reporter and share his views on water.

Water is something everyone wants to talk about.

The water deliverymen, accustomed to the barrage of complaints, take the comments in stride, asserting that they don’t overcharge and, in fact, attempt to provide equally for each neighborhood. “We work hard to be as just as possible,” asserted Raul Gonzalez, general secretary of the water-tank driver’s association of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, a nationwide union.

The confederation and other unions affiliated with the ruling party receive government concessions to deliver water tapped from various city wells, mostly near the Tijuana River. Critics say the situation is hopelessly politicized, but government officials defend the selection process as equitable.

Targets of Complaints

After the water-truck drivers, the favorite target of those lacking water here is the Baja California State Public Service Commission, the state body that oversees the supply. Community leaders besiege the commission headquarters near downtown, imploring the government to extend water service.

“There is no water in Tijuana,” said Catalino Zavala, a community leader and opposition politician who has led campaigns to bring water and electrical service to Tijuana’s outlying communities, and charges that authorities have provided supplies for income-producing tourist and industrial zones at the expense of poor neighborhoods. “The government is sacrificing the needs of the people so it can pay back its foreign debt.”

Inside the state government structure, Armando Valenzuela Sainz, the commission’s general director in Tijuana, says the fiscally strained government simply cannot produce plumbing and other infrastructure at a pace sufficient to keep up with the rapid growth of a city swelled by migration. “We need twice as much water as we have,” said the often-beleaguered Valenzuela, who denied frequently leveled charges of incompetence, corruption and favoritism within the water-supply system. “We do the best we can.”

While authorities have attempted to portray last month’s aqueduct rupture as a one-time aberration, many have expressed the view that it was an ominous portent. “That break was just a harbinger of what’s going to happen,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, a social scientist here who conducted a study alleging widespread corruption, overcharging and abuse of contracts in the construction of the massive, 6-foot diameter aqueduct. “In five years, the entire aqueduct won’t be working.”

The 150-mile line, transporting water over the Rumorosa Mountains from the Colorado River, began operations some three years ago, after more than a decade of construction and untold millions in investment. The aqueduct supplanted various previous sources of water, notably the once-overflowing Rodriguez Dam, which is now little more than mud after a number of dry years.

Recognizing the need, and the vulnerability of having only one principal water supply, authorities are planning to construct another aqueduct to bring additional Colorado River water. That is several years in the future, however.

In the meantime, Mexican officials would like to make permanent the water emergency connection recently hooked up with San Diego, a move that provided some 12 million gallons daily, almost one-fourth of what Tijuana is allotted from the Colorado River. Authorities north of the border are examining the request, as are officials of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a 100-year-old body that mediates water and other border matters between the two nations. Tijuana would pay for the transmission for of the water.

There’s No Quick Fix

Even if U.S. authorities do agree to send additional water south, Tijuana’s supply difficulties remain daunting, and, with each week, the city’s population expands. For the foreseeable future, water delivery drivers such as Fausto Matus will continue to provide a critical link in the area water-supply chain.

As his truck bounds up and down the unpaved streets of the Bull Hills neighborhood, Matus, a mirthful 30-year-old whose father owned a water truck, recalled that he had been driving a tanker since the age of 15. Working on commission, he can earn as much as $150 during his six-day week, a decent salary here, although not enough, at least yet, to afford the $3,000 or so needed to purchase a truck.

The work carries serious risks. His last two trucks turned over on steep hills, but he escaped serious injury. Some drivers, he admits, are frightened to drive on such treacherous streets, and stick to safer neighborhoods. Not Matus, despite bald tires, slipping gears and questionable brakes.

“I feel a responsibility toward the people in this colonia,” Matus explains, gunning his tank truck in second gear up a steep incline, honking his horn to announce his presence, steering toward the home of a woman washing dishes in a basin set up outside her home. “They rely on me, they know me. I provide them with something very important. I like the work.”

Having completed sales from his 1,000-gallon tank, Matus heads back to the truck yard and the well, to fill up with water once again and return to the neighborhood known as Bull Hills.