People use plastic containers to collect drinking water in Havana. Water supply problems have worsened in recent months in Cuba, partly due to power outages that interrupt water pumping through hydraulic networks and, at times, equipment breakdowns. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Dariel Pradas
HAVANA, Feb 28 2025 (IPS)

Problems such as hydraulic network breakdowns, water lost through leaks, power outages, and even fuel shortages are making access to water supply services difficult for the population in Cuba

“Terrible,” is how Mariam Alba, a café employee and resident of Manzanillo, a city 750 kilometers east of Havana in the eastern province of Granma, described the water supply situation to IPS.“In my neighborhood we have water almost every day, but I know places that go months without it. In the early hours, you see people carrying water from a hole filled by a leak. It’s not drinking water:” Mariam Alba.

“In my neighborhood, Reparto Gutierrez, we have water almost every day, but I know places that go months without it. In the early hours, you see people carrying water from a hole filled by a leak. It’s not drinking water. On some blocks, they’ve placed tanks: they fill them in the morning, and by night they’re empty. Then they refill them a month later,” she added.

In this province with 804,000 people, only 76% receive piped water in their homes, and just 38.7% have access to water at least once every three days. Meanwhile, over 66,000 residents depend on water delivered by tanker trucks, as confirmed by Granma’s Hydraulic Resources authorities in an interview with IPS in August 2024.

A month after that interview, the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH) announced that over 30,000 people in the province lacked access to water services, out of a total of more than 600,000 nationwide.

In Havana, where supply issues may not be as prolonged as in Manzanillo, they are more widespread: around 130,000 “customers” were affected last September.

“I’ve gone up to two weeks without water due to a supposed break in the (hydraulic) network. Then the issue gets fixed, but comes up again soon after. In the 40 years I’ve lived here, there hasn’t been a single day when I wasn’t unsure if the water would come or not,” Flora Alvarez, a 43-year-old accountant living in Centro Habana, told IPS.

A worker from Aguas de La Habana supervises the filling of a water tanker truck that supplies drinking water to residents of Havana communities. By early February 2025, over 600,000 people in Cuba were receiving water permanently through tanker trucks. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

An Infrastructure Problem

Cuba lacks large rivers and, being an island, faces the constant risk of saline intrusion into its groundwater. It relies heavily on rainfall, so droughts severely impact water supply, especially in the agricultural sector.

However, 2024 was not as marked by this climate change effect as previous years: accumulated rainfall reached 97% of the national historical average, and reservoirs were at 63% of their total capacity, or 98% of the usual level for early February, when the INRH presented its annual report.

The problem begins with over 40% of pumped water being lost due to leaks in major pipelines, hydraulic network branches – sometimes visible on dozens or hundreds of Havana streets – and even from dripping faucets in homes.

Hydraulic sector officials acknowledge the existence of 2,500 to 3,000 such leaks.

Secondly, pump equipment breakdowns or interruptions due to frequent power outages, characteristic of Cuba’s energy crisis, also degrade service quality, which not everyone has access to.

In this Caribbean island nation of about 10 million inhabitants, only 83.9% are supplied water by public Water and Sanitation companies, 4.5% more than at the end of 2023, according to the annual report.

The INRH acknowledged in its report that this improvement is largely due to a decrease in population.

Meanwhile, investment in creating new connections to hydraulic networks and other sanitation work has slowed, reaching only 45% of the planned target, due to the negative impact of U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba and unpaid debts to creditors.

Additionally, only 61.2% of the population has access to “risk-free” drinking water services, 1.6% more than in 2023.

The “risk-free” definition aligns with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “safely managed” standard, which refers to access to “drinking water from an improved water source that is located on premises, available when needed, and free from faecal and priority chemical contamination.”

By early February, over 600,000 people were receiving water permanently through tanker trucks, and nearly 1.5 million through “easy access” points, where people can fetch water in less than 30 minutes, including travel and waiting time.

However, these figures do not account for the thousands affected by “temporary” pipeline breaks, who must then carry water from easy access points or rely on tanker trucks that arrive as frequently as fuel supplies allow –  another recurring issue in Cuba.

The company Aguas de La Habana lays a high-density polyethylene pipe as part of the installation of new hydraulic networks in the Cuban capital. In 2024, the government installed 241 kilometers of new water supply networks, mains, and connections to alleviate chronic water supply issues. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Slow Progress

“The goals and targets planned for 2024 were met at an acceptable level, considering the adverse scenario,” summarizes the INRH’s annual report.

This optimism is based on the fact that, despite only resolving around 60% of public complaints or reports in several provinces, 241 kilometers of networks, mains, and new water supply connections were installed.

Or an average of 512 liters of water per inhabitant per day, representing 91.8% of the planned amount, though distribution remains uneven, as the figures show.

The INRH also worked on installing 32 water treatment plants, 10 wastewater treatment plants, and 9 desalination plants, as well as replacing pumping equipment and installing nearly 25,000 water meters, useful for promoting water conservation with tariffs based on actual consumption. Without these, many households pay a fixed monthly fee.

However, authorities predict that the core water problems will continue to “flow” through 2025, despite the government’s multimillion-dollar investments to improve the situation.

Félix Morfis, next to photovoltaic panels installed on his house in Regla municipality, Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños /IPS

By Dariel Pradas
HAVANA, Dec 12 2024 (IPS)

With Decree 110, published on 26 November, Cuba made it mandatory for major consumers, whether they are state or private entities, to invest in the use of renewable energy sources, while the energy crisis facing the country worsens.

According to the decree, state and private economic actors, representations of foreign institutions and associations must guarantee in new investments regarded as “major consumers of energy carriers” that half of the electricity they consume during daylight hours comes from renewable energy sources.

If they cannot install solar panels, due to the infrastructure of their premises, these entities must enter into contracts with the state-owned Unión Eléctrica – the guarantor of the generation, transmission and commercialisation of electricity – and connect to photovoltaic parks.

Breaking these provisions can lead to fines, interruption of electricity service for up to 72 hours and other sanctions.

“The measure reflects a failure in the policy of incentives for investment in renewable energy sources. It may favour the general population, but it doesn’t change the fact that the change in the energy matrix is being imposed with an iron fist,” Daniel López, a self-employed Havana resident, told IPS.

Entities considered major consumers – those that, in the last 12 months, have an average consumption of 30,000 kilowatts (KW) or 50,000 litres of fuel – will have three years to make investments to cover the 50% daytime use requirement.

Reactions on social media immediately followed the news: many internet users celebrated the decree, some were sceptical about its implementation, and a significant number feared for the impact it could have on the private sector.

“Is it viable providing a better service or increasing my production to have to pay more (by investing in solar panels), and not just in taxes? How many businesses are we going to lose because of this decree? Investment in Cuba is increasingly difficult,” commented user Horus in an article on the subject, published in Cubadebate, the most widely read state-run news website in the country.

Indeed, the law could discourage entrepreneurship in mini-industries or productive areas that normally consume a lot of electricity, or even cause businesses to raise the prices of some products and services to recoup investment costs.

Since 2020, this Caribbean island nation with 10 million people has been facing great difficulties in meeting its domestic electricity demand with its production plants.

The instability of the electro-energy system has been so evident that, in less than two months, Cuba has suffered three general power cuts – the latest on Wednesday 4 December – that have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity for days.

Workers inside a private lathe workshop in Havana’s Patio El Triunfo, whose electricity supply comes from renewable sources. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

In the absence of incentives

The Patio El Triunfo project, located in the capital’s Regla municipality, is an example of a private business that is self-sufficient in renewable energy sources. It has installed photovoltaic panels with a generation of 10 kilowatts (KW), as well as solar heaters and dryers, and a 0.5 KW wind turbine.

This “clean” energy covers the daytime demand of the house and four businesses that are leased on the premises, including an auto mechanic’s workshop and a lathe shop.

Although the workshops have been in existence since 2010, in 2018 the project began the autonomous production of electricity, the surplus of which it sells to Unión Eléctrica.

The leader of the project, Félix Morfis, who is also the Regla representative of Cubasolar, a non-governmental organisation that has been promoting the use of renewable energy sources in Cuba since 1994 to replace polluting ones, criticises the prices of solar panels and the bureaucratic obstacles to accessing credit and buying them.

“It seems that the Cuban government has no interest whatsoever in people putting up solar panels. They advertise it, they hype it a lot, but actually there is nothing in hand,” he told IPS.

In the retail markets of the state-owned company Copextel, a basic one-kW generation module costs 2,551 MLC, the freely convertible currency, which is virtual and whose reference value is the dollar.

The average wage in Cuba is 4,648 pesos, about US$38.7, according to the official exchange rate of 120 pesos to one dollar.

In 2021, the Ministry of Finance and Prices issued Resolution 359,, which set the price for energy – from renewable sources – delivered to the National Electricity System (SEN) by independent producers in the residential sector: 3 pesos per kilowatt hour (kWh), about 0.025 dollars at the official exchange rate.

In October 2023, the same ministry approved Resolution 238, which doubled that amount.

“They are paying us 6 pesos (US$ 0.05) per kWh, but what I spend, they charge me through the normal system. They sell it to me at a high price and pay me cheaply. There is no incentive,” Morfis added.

The “normal system” that Morfis mentions is a progressive tariff that applies to the residential sector, which after exceeding 450 KWh of accumulated consumption, starts to cost more than six pesos per KWh, until it reaches 20 pesos per KWh (about US$ 0.17).

In any case, it is a subsidised price, according to the authorities, so that the cost of paying for electricity through the national electricity system is only marginally lower than importing or buying solar panels in foreign currency. In the end, it is more profitable not to invest in renewable energy sources.

Even so, more and more people are investing in solar panels with batteries, and private businesses that commercialise these devices have multiplied due to recurrent power outages and fuel shortages.

With no new cards in hand, the government imposed investment in renewable energy sources through Decree 110.

“The most difficult thing is how to make it easier for all the companies to pay for these panels,” Néstor Pérez, a member of the Patio El Triunfo project, told IPS.

Basic module for the production of electricity from solar sources, inside a market in Havana, specialised in the sale of equipment for the use of renewable energy sources, belonging to the state-owned company Copextel. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Overview of renewable energy sources

In addition to decentralised energy generation and reducing the burden on the state, the new decree aims to reduce on imported-fuel dependency.

Since 2019, when the government issued Decree-Law 345 on the “development of renewable sources and the efficient use of energy”, this policy has been a priority.

Cuba aims for renewable energy sources to account for 24% of its energy matrix by 2030.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced on 27 November that more than 2,000 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic energy, equivalent to two million KW, is planned for the next three years.

However, of the 19,825 gigawatt hours (GWh) produced in 2023, 46% came from thermoelectric plants and 12.6% from using thermal energy from oil-fired natural gas, according to data from the  National Statistics and Information Office (Onei).

Likewise, 13.8% was produced by gensets, electricity generators interconnected to the system that run on diesel and fuel oil, and 22.7% from the six floating plants contracted to the Turkish company Karpowership.

Only 0.5% came from hydroelectric plants and 1.2% from wind and photovoltaic power.

A fisherman sits next to several boats at the GeoCuba Local Interest Fishing Port in the bay of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Dariel Pradas
MANZANILLO, Cuba, Oct 2 2024 (IPS)

Every time a hurricane clouds the skies over the city of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma, the sea pounds the Litoral neighbourhood, forcing many of the 200 families who live there to evacuate inland because of flooding.

When the weather is calm, the sea penetrates subtly and constantly, salinizing the water table and eroding the coast, affecting the foundations of houses and artesian wells.

“The water almost always enters this area. The houses were built too close to the sea and the mangroves are deforested,” community leader Martha Labrada, 65, told IPS.

Labrada has presided over the people’s council (local administration organisation) for 13 years, which covers the Litoral neighbourhood and a two-kilometer stretch of coastline that is home to about 5,000 people.

Also, in her jurisdiction, about 0.2 square kilometres of mangroves have been deforested or are in very poor condition.

A mangrove forest in Manzanillo Bay, eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protective mangroves

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), mangroves extract up to five times more carbon than land forests, raise the ground level and thus slow down the rise in sea level.

This coastal ecosystem, typical of tropical and subtropical areas, usually consists of a swamp forest, a strip of black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and a strip of red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), the barrier closest to the sea, whose trunks absorb the impact of waves and protect against extreme weather conditions.

Mangroves act as nurseries for fish fry and as havens for honey bees, among a huge variety of fauna and flora.

They also serve as a protective area for fresh water. If degraded, salt from marine waters would more easily enter underground water basins, contaminating the drinkability of this liquid and disabling wells located miles inland.

Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of the Mi Costa project on behalf of the provincial government of Granma in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protection from the sea

The Litoral neighbourhood is one of the most vulnerable in the municipality to climate change because it borders the mangroves, but it is not the only one in this situation.

In Manzanillo there are six people’s councils that are in direct contact with the coast. Some 60,000 inhabitants suffer the consequences, almost half of the total population of the municipality located 753 kilometres east of Havana.

The need to find solutions to the problem of rising sea levels was therefore born in the rural neighborhoods and villages of Manzanillo.

To counteract this prospect, small community projects emerged in 2018, also promoted by a national plan to tackle climate change known as Tarea Vida, which had been launched by the central government a year earlier.

As a result, 23 initiatives were set up in the municipality, which were later grouped in a single nationwide project called Mi Costa, the project’s coordinator in Manzanillo, Margot Hernández, told IPS.

Mi Costa seeks to create conditions of resilience to climate change through adaptation solutions based on strengthening the benefits provided by coastal ecosystems. In essence, its main task is to reforest and rehabilitate mangroves.

“In addition, we have to change living habits. That’s what we are working on,” Hernández added.

Ditch built in the middle of a mangrove swamp to contribute to its drainage and the recirculation of saline and fresh water in the municipality of Manzanillo, eastern Cuba. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Behind deforestation

Manzanillo, because of its low isometry and its 25 kilometres of coastline, is in a serious state of environmental vulnerability.

The deforested areas of mangroves amount to 708.7 hectares, being the most affected concentrated at the river mouths.

With a weakened natural containment barrier, the saline waters penetrate the riverbeds and, for example, in the Yara River, in the north of the municipality, they do so up to seven kilometres inland, according to Leandro Concepción, the project coordinator for the Granma Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.

In any case, the salinity penetrates through underground water basins and, according to Hernández, the coordinator in Manzanillo, “there are people’s artesian wells, which were once used for consumption but are now salinized.”

Mangrove deforestation has several causes: the lack or blockage of channels hinders the ebb and flow of the tide and alters the exchange of freshwater with marine waters.

It is also affected by the invasion of invasive exotic species such as the arboreal Ipil Ipil or guaje (Leucaena leucocephala), anthropogenic human intervention through the construction of infrastructure, agricultural and livestock practices near the coast, and even the felling of mangroves to make charcoal.

A group of people receive a class given by the Mi Costa project at the Manzanillo Training Center. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

According to Labrada, the community leader in Litoral, several houses have been built almost adjacent to the mangrove, without the corresponding construction permits. Moreover, state-owned industrial infrastructures, such as a shoe factory and an inactive sawmill, cause the same damage.

Coastal and river pollution from industrial waste dumping also depresses coastal ecosystems.

For decades, the region’s sugar mills and rice industry dumped their waste into the rivers, Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of Mi Costa on behalf of the Granma provincial government, told IPS.

This situation is one of the examples of climate injustice in the area: upstream, the industrial sector caused environmental havoc that affected mangrove health and, at the end of the chain, the quality of life of coastal residents, making them more vulnerable to climatic events.

In 2023, decisive measures were taken to solve the problem and the few active factories no longer discharge their waste into the sea or use filters. In the second half of 2024, the results have already begun to show: “The migratory birds have returned, something you didn’t see months ago,” said Estrada.

However, the effects of climate change still persist in Manzanillo.

“The environmental situation today is quite complex for the keys,” Víctor Remón, director of Manzanillo’s Department of Territorial Development, which belongs to the local government, told IPS.

The municipality’s territory contains an extensive cay of 2.44 square kilometres, but Cayo Perla has already been submerged under the waters of the Gulf of Guacanayabo.

“It disappeared six or seven years ago. It was a beautiful key, with beautiful white sands. There was a tourist facility from where you could see the city of Manzanillo,” Remón said.

For his part, Roberto David Rosales, fisherman and Mi Costa contributor, remembers a path he used to walk along the shore until last year; now it has been ‘swallowed’ by the sea.

“Almost two meters were lost in this area in one year. These are things that force us to be protectors of the mangroves. The Mi Costa project came at the right time,” he told IPS.

Margot Hernández (left), coordinator of the Mi Costa project in Manzanillo, opens the training centre in the city of Manzanillo. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Steps towards a solution

Mi Costa was made official in December 2021, but heavy work began in 2023, due to a pause caused by the COVID pandemic.

In Manzanillo, the project brought together about 100 collaborators, who were divided into small community groups of about 10 people, who support the monitoring and cleaning of mangroves and ditches and awareness-raising among the population.

Labrada also has its own people’s council group, composed of six women and four men.

In addition, training centres have been set up in the municipality on climate change adaptability, environmental safeguards, gender and other issues. To date, 10,500 people have been trained.

“We are working with the coast dwellers, because the issue is that people don’t leave the coasts, but that they stay and learn to live there, taking care of them,” said Estrada, the government coordinator.

Sunset on the boardwalk in the eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

They have also built 1,300 meters of ditches, using picks and shovels, to achieve a form of water rotation, but this figure has yet to be multiplied.

The immediate challenge is to finish building the nursery where the mangrove seedlings will sprout and then be planted in the deforested areas.

“Once we have the nursery, there will be no difficulty at all in Granma to begin the process of rehabilitating the mangroves,” Norvelis Reyes, Mi Costa’s main coordinator in the province, told IPS.

Mi Costa’s area of action in Granma covers, in addition to the coast of Manzanillo, the northern municipalities of Yara and Río Cauto.

Nationwide, 24 communities in the south of Cuba are involved in resilience actions (1,300 kilometres of coastline), of which 14 are at risk of disappearing due to coastal flooding by 2050, including Manzanillo.

The southern coast of this Caribbean island country was chosen because it is more vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, given its lower geographical isometry than in the north.

In addition, the south also has a higher concentration of mangroves, making it more necessary and effective to build coastal resilience based on adaptation and focused on the rehabilitation and reforestation of these ecosystems.

While implemented by the communities themselves and with the participation of the villagers, the project is supervised by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the country office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The Green Climate Fund provided funding of USD 23.9 million, while Cuban state institutions contributed USD 20.3 million.

The ultimate goal will be to restore some 114 square kilometres of mangroves, 31 square kilometres of swamp forest and nine square kilometres of grassy swamps in eight years. After that, a period of 22 years will be dedicated to the operation and maintenance of the implemented actions.

It is estimated that more than 1.3 million people will benefit on this Caribbean island, the largest in the region and home to 11 million people.

UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Two people collect drinking water in plastic containers at the intake of the pumping station of the desalination plant located in Las Mangas, Granma province, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Dariel Pradas
BAYAMO, Cuba, Sep 9 2024 (IPS)

Overnight, hundreds of people in the rural community of Las Mangas, located in Granma province in eastern Cuba, realised something they had already suspected: that the water they had been drinking for decades was not exactly crystal clear, but rather “salty”, as they say.

It was certainly a positive change, thanks to a desalination plant that started operating in August, five years after construction began in 2019, with a US$ 61,000 investment by the Granma Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.

“We did a test and the water coming from the plant freezes clear, while the water from the street freezes white, because of impurities. Now, with the plant, the people are happy,” community representative Rodolfo Echavarría, 55, told IPS.

Las Mangas is part of the municipality of Bayamo, the provincial capital, some 740 kilometres east of Havana. It has water networks that carry water from a well to the connections in the houses.

However, the water source contains a salinity rate exceeding one gram of soluble salts per litre of water, the limit permitted for human consumption by the country’s health authorities.“The desalination plant is a great benefit, a marvel. If something as necessary as water is not good, imagine the damage it causes to health": Óscar Fajardo.

“The desalination plant was built at the outlet of this brackish well, serving as an easy access point (where people can fetch the processed liquid with containers),” explained Yasser Vázquez, deputy sub-delegate of the Water Resources Delegation in Granma, in an interview with IPS in Bayamo.

The new facility, the third of its kind in the province, processes 2,000 litres of water a day and, according to the planners’ estimates, benefits 1,097 inhabitants. Echavarría believes that number rises to almost 2,000 people, since the villages of El Chungo, La Bayamesa and Santa María, all more than three kilometres from Las Mangas, also benefit.

The plant’s purification system uses the reverse osmosis method, one of the most widespread globally. There are others such as distillation, freezing, hydrate formation, flash evaporation or electrodialysis.

Reverse osmosis involves applying pressure to brackish water and making it flow through a semi-permeable membrane whose role is to allow the solvent (water) to pass through, but not the solute (dissolved salts).

In essence, the water in a pressurised saline solution is separated from the dissolved salts as it passes through the membrane and then goes through further rounds of filtration and chemical injection until it reaches the required standards of potability.

A local resident, Yoel González, 52, was trained to operate the plant and is in charge of its maintenance.

“You have to know how it works, because there are things that can go wrong, as has happened. I have lived all my life in Las Mangas and the best thing that has happened here is this (the installation of the desalination plant). Water has always been difficult. We used to drink that brackish water, and you could taste the acid and salt in it,” he told IPS.

Yoel Gonzáles Almeida, an operator at the pumping station of the desalination plant in the town of Las Mangas, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

A change of scenery, or rather, of waters

In this village eight kilometres from the city of Bayamo, between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm, when the desalination plant opens, people gather at the site’s only existing tap and fill various-sized containers.

The water coming out of the tap in every home or facility in Las Mangas, the brackish water that barely comes out of the well chlorinated, is only used for cleaning, dishes, laundry and sometimes cooking. In this agricultural and livestock farming village, some farmers also use it to quench their animals’ thirst.

“When the plant was set up, people said at the beginning: ‘I drink it from the street, I’ve been drinking it all my life and I haven’t died’. Cubans are like that. But when they tried the new one, everything changed,” argued Echavarría, the community leader.

Nancy Gómez, 72, was born there and is one of the few people who resists the change.

“The neighbours are surprised because I don’t look for fresh water, but I’m used to it and it has never caused me any health problems. My children grew up drinking that (brackish) water. But my granddaughter does bring it from the plant for the children and I drink it from time to time. You can taste the difference,” she told IPS.

A view of the Las Mangas desalination plant in eastern Cuba, which provides the villagers with quality drinking water. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Oscar Fajardo, 50, has always avoided drinking water from the well since he moved to Las Mangas four years ago from Guasimilla, eight kilometres away.

In his home town, the water tasted fresh and “sweet”, so he never got used to the new saltiness. Even after moving away, Fajardo still fetched it in Guasimilla on his electric motorbike whenever he visited his mother.

“I would look for water there or in other places. Sometimes I had to drink the bad one, but after seeing the sediment that accumulated in the knobs and pots, I tried to avoid it. People here have adapted to drinking brackish water, but a few found alternative ways,” he told IPS.

While it was common to boil and drink the tap water, some people who knew better or had more money would go to Bayamo or El Chungo to fill their own household containers, or buy the liquid from owners of horse-drawn carts, who would sell 200 litres for the equivalent of US$ 0.40.

“The desalination plant is a great benefit, a marvel. If something as necessary as water is not good, imagine the damage it causes to health,” said Fajardo.

A woman uses brackish water for household chores in the community of Las Mangas, eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Dangers of salinated water

The risks of consuming water with excess salt are varied: upset stomach, dehydration, high blood pressure, fluid retention in the body or kidney damage.

After all, salt contains, in addition to the chloride electrolyte, sodium, a mineral harmful to the human body in many ways when ingested in large quantities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends an intake of no more than five grams of salt per day, equivalent to two grams (2000 mg) of sodium.

González, the operator of the Las Mangas desalination plant, said the community has several cases of kidney stones (also called nephrolithiasis or urolithiasis), which are hard deposits made of minerals and salts that form inside the kidneys and can affect any part of the urinary tract.

They may have arisen from prolonged consumption of brackish water, as several villagers interviewed by IPS suspect.

“One of my children complains when he urinates because of the stones, and he gets renal colics all the time,” said Gómez, the resident who is reluctant to drink the water processed by the plant.

Marisol Hildago, 37, also a resident of Las Mangas and mother of two, used to drink tap water until something caused her to start looking for water from El Chungo.

“My father suffered from chronic renal insufficiency and that’s why I started to look for water there. Now we only drink water from the plant and my father has improved,” she told IPS.

A view of the pumping station of the desalination plant in the town of Las Mangas. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Water issues in the province

Las Mangas is not the only community in Granma with water-related issues. There are others where the subsurface basins and water sources have high levels of salinity, which often receive drinking water from tanker trucks.

Granma, known as the ‘Key to the Cauto’ (river), where the longest watercourse in all the Antilles flows at 343 kilometres, also has a low-isometric relief and boggy areas, which makes it more vulnerable to seawater encroachment and saline intrusion into the water table, as happens in Las Mangas and other places.

Some scholars claim that the river’s flow has decreased in part due to climate change, deforestation and the construction of the Cauto del Paso reservoir, the third largest in the country and inaugurated in 1992.

With the lowering of the river level, seawater encroaches with greater force through the course itself, affecting the water basins of some lands at the mouth of the Cauto.

This province with 804,000 people – in a country with a population of 10 million – has had a stable water situation with its supply sources since the heavy rains of June 2023, which, in addition to filling reservoirs and restoring the water table, destroyed part of the infrastructure.

Marisol Hidalgo drinks potable water in the kitchen of her home, obtained from the desalination plant located in the community of Las Mangas. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Granma generally suffers from droughts which, according to water authorities, affect up to 100,000 of its inhabitants.

When this happens, river flow decreases and saline intrusion from the sea increases, disabling numerous wells, especially the shallower, artisanal ones, which are a solution for residents in places that are difficult to access.

The other major problem lies in the accessibility of water networks and the availability of the service, as only 76% of the province’s population receives piped water in their homes and only 38.7% (some 310,000 people) receive water at home at least once every three days.

Other more affected areas, such as the coastal municipality of Manzanillo, can get water supplies for up to 20 days. In all, more than 66,000 residents are supplied by water tankers.

A further 15 desalination plants are planned for Granma, to be added to the dozens existing throughout the country. In the last decade, the Cuban government has promoted the construction of these hydraulic works, both in communities with salinised water sources and in industries and beach resorts.