Working at UNICEF has so far been very interesting, and there is always a lot of work to be done. I have had various tasks and assignments since I’ve been here. One of these has to do with water quality in Bolivia.

In Canada, standards and guidelines exist for drinking water quality and are enforced. We have the knowledge, resources, and laboratory capacity to carry out testing, analysis and reporting. We also have the ability to provide resources to fix any problems that might be encountered. How do you monitor water quality in a country where, at least in rural areas, most of these requisites are missing?

Bolivia has standards and guidelines for drinking water quality. In large cities, private water providers do have the capacity, of both resources and lab facilities, to monitor the water quality (so I am told). In rural areas, where the systems often consist of gravity systems fed by springs or wells with hand pumps with little or no treatment, there is no ability to monitor water quality. There is no money, there are no trained lab technicians, let alone many labs, transportation is difficult and there is no support network.

I have been tasked with writing a Project Profile for a water quality monitoring network. This comes before the Proposal, so does not go into a lot of detail. It generally describes the intention of the project, with goals and expected outcomes. UNICEF itself has become involved because we are interested in knowing about raw water quality in Bolivia and whether we need be looking for any major contaminants (aside from microbiological contaminants, which are present almost everywhere). Knowing what contaminants may a problem in the country, either in certain regions (for example heavy metals near mining operations) or in the country as a whole is the first step towards a country-wide monitoring program. You need to know what to look for! It is too expensive to test for everything possible, so this project will determine which parameters should be monitored, and how to carry out the monitoring.

I won’t be here long enough to see the results of the project, if it gets the required funding from donors. It will probably take 3 years or more to complete. But it is certainly interesting to try to do some investigation into water quality. There is not a lot of literature about the existing water quality here. There are supposedly some other organizations who may have done some work, but no one can really say for sure.

I met today with a government worker who explained the regulations and guidelines that are in place, but couldn’t tell me much about what, if any, contaminants might be a problem. The government has started a pilot program in 13 communities where someone will be trained in the use of a portable laboratory kit to monitor the water quality. It will be very interesting to see the results. Portable laboratory kits are useful, but have drawbacks as well (for example, there are supplies that need to be bought on a yearly basis and are not available in the country).

Needless to say, just finding information is a challenge!