Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) has an ambitious project: to conduct a national diagnostic of the country’s 1,471 ASADAs (rural waterboards). Their mission is to collect information about the conditions in which the Asadas provide water resource services, to find out the real current state of their infrastructure, the conditions under which they work and, at the same time, to check that they comply with the rules and regulatory frameworks.
Due to the immensity of the initiative, the work, which began in July of 2015, will last for three years and cost $850,000.
Rodolfo Ramirez, who is overseeing the study, explained that the work began with 305 ASADAs from 11 cantons, seven of which belong to Guanacaste.
Of the 305 ASADAs studied, 285 participated in the diagnostic, but 20, mainly from the Guanacaste coast, did not want AyA to put together information “because they have some situation that they do not want discovered, or because they think that AyA wants to take over the administration,” stated Ramirez.
Ramirez added that the they selected the ASADAs from seven cantons of Guanacaste to be among the first 11 cantons nationally “due to being the province that is being most affected at this time by the drought.”
They want to know how the water resources are managed by these administrative entities, especially with the effects incurred due to climate change. “There are ASADAs with flow reduction and even some with dry wells,” said Ramirez.
With the diagnostic, adaptation measures could be applied before the crisis really becomes serious to “ensure water for the future.”
The study is being financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) together with the non-profit organization CRUSA and the Global Environment Facility.
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