Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller dives into the real-world water issues expats face in Latin America. He begins by contrasting the idealized portrayals of the region in travel media with the harsh realities of water scarcity. Johnny highlights the severe consequences of declining water tables in both the United States and Europe, noting that in some areas, water tables have dropped to 500 feet, leading to water rationing in Latin America. He emphasizes the importance of private wells for expats, as municipal water supplies are often unreliable and substandard. The cost and technical challenges of accessing deep water sources are also discussed, along with the financial burden this places on expats.
Johnny then shifts focus to the water crisis in Latin America, explaining how municipal water supplies are failing due to declining water tables and lack of investment in deeper wells. Instead of addressing the issue, cities resort to rationing and increasing water prices. As a result, families are forced to install cisterns for water storage. Johnny describes two types of cisterns: plastic rooftop cisterns, which are cheap but ugly and common, and concrete underground cisterns, which are more durable and efficient but expensive. He highlights the lack of maintenance and the potential for contamination in cisterns, sharing a personal anecdote about finding dead animals in a cistern he purchased. He also explains how cist, but warns that without electricity, they are useless.
In the next segment, Johnny discusses the challenges and advantages of having an underground concrete cistern for water storage. He highlights the issue of needing electricity to operate the pump, which can be a problem during power outages. However, he also points out that concrete cisterns have significant advantages, such as durability, earthquake resistance, and the ability to store large volumes of water. He contrasts these with rooftop plastic cisterns, which are less durable and have limited storage capacity. Johnny recommends expats and even first-world residents to consider installing a concrete cistern, especially in areas prone to water shortages or power outages.
Johnny then moves on to discuss the challenges of cistern construction and plumbing in Latin America, highlighting the tendency of local builders to take shortcuts, which leads to issues like PVC pipe joint failures. He contrasts this with the use of cement cisterns, which are more durable but require more effort and cost. He also addresses the advantages and disadvantages of plastic rooftop cisterns, including their fragility, limited capacity, and susceptibility to leaks due to temperature changes. Johnny emphasizes the importance of water conservation, noting that North Americans are beginning to adopt similar practices as Latin Americans have long done to cope with water shortages.
In the next segment, Johnny discusses the water delivery industry in Latin America, highlighting the lack of regulation and the prevalence of private water companies. He describes how these companies often operate in a lawless environment, with drivers pulling up to rivers and lakes to siphon water directly, despite it being illegal. He also details the poor quality of the water, noting that the filtration process is minimal, consisting of little more than a window screen, which fails to remove bacteria, viruses, and other contaminants. Johnny emphasizes the deceptive marketing of these services, as the water is not as pure as advertised.
Finally, Johnny expresses skepticism about the quality of water in Latin America, citing a Latin newspaper that states 95% of natural freshwater sources are contaminated beyond World Health Organization standards. He argues that the local population has little interest in preserving the environment, and that environmental efforts are typically led by first-world expats or tourists. He also discusses the illegal extraction of water and sand from rivers and lakes, highlighting the lack of enforcement of environmental laws and the prevalence of illegal activities such as private water tanker companies siphoning water from public sources. Johnny also mentions the presence of religious symbols on these trucks, suggesting a cultural attitude of self-reliance.
Topics
Water scarcity in the United States and Europe, Water table depth and its impact on water access, Municipal water supply issues in Latin America, Importance of private wells for expats, Cost and challenges of accessing deep water sources, Water crisis in Latin America, Cisterns as a solution to water shortages, Contamination and maintenance of cisterns, Municipal water supply failures, Water storage solutions for expats, Concrete cisterns vs. rooftop cisterns, Power outages and water access
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:34 Water Scarcity in the United States and Europe 00:02:10 Water Scarcity in Latin America and the Importance of Private Wells 00:02:59 Cost and Challenges of Accessing Deep Water Sources 00:04:50 Multiplier Effect of Water Shortages in Latin America 00:04:51 Municipal Water Supplies Falling Behind 00:05:15 Water Becomes Expensive and Unreliable 00:05:56 Plastic Rooftop Cisterns Are Common but Ugly 00:07:08 Concrete Underground Cisterns Are Better but Expensive 00:07:57 Contamination and Maintenance Issues in Cisterns 00:08:34 Cisterns as Backup Systems for Water Supply 00:09:44 The Problem with Concrete Cisterns and Electricity 00:13:21 The Advantages of a Large Concrete Cistern 00:14:26 The Importance of Cistern Construction 00:14:30 Simple Plans for Cistern Construction 00:14:35 Johnny Offers Guidance on Cistern Construction 00:14:39 Repairing Old Cisterns 00:14:44 The Role of Latin Builders 00:14:46 Shortcuts in Latin Construction 00:14:50 The Cost of Shortcuts 00:14:51 The Importance of Cleaning PVC Pipe Ends 00:19:01 The Water Delivery Business in Latin America 00:19:29 Private Water Delivery as a Growing Industry 00:19:34 The Wild West of Water Delivery 00:20:46 Water Sources and Legal Issues 00:21:39 Water Quality and Filtration 00:22:42 The Reality of 'Pure Water' 00:24:28 The Contaminated Water Crisis in Latin America 00:24:57 A Historical Perspective on Environmental Issues 00:25:22 The Lack of Environmental Interest Among Locals 00:26:04 Illegal Water and Resource Extraction
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. If you've been paying attention to the newspapers and have been listening to the dire warnings of climatologists, geologists and even farmers, you'll know that a lot of places in the United States, especially in the western states like Nevada, Texas and California, well they're absolutely running out of potable water.
[00:50] And if you read the European newspapers, you'll see it's happening there too. The water tables are dropping dangerously low. And if you look back just a hundred years ago, most of the water tables around the planet were no more than 30 to 50 feet down, and such a shallow depth is basically unheard of these days. And back then, in a lot of places, gravediggers would actually hit the water table. But that almost never happens anymore, except of course if you live around New Orleans, which is one of the only major cities in the world built below sea level, another one being Amsterdam in Holland, which as you might have noticed actually has the word dam in it, as in damming up the water. And that's why in those places, the graves in the cemeteries are built above the ground. Because if you dig down just a few inches, you hit the water table. And that's also why New Orleans is always in danger of flooding, and therefore not a
[01:38] good place to live, especially if there's a big storm and the power goes out. Because the pumps won't work when water tries to seek its own level. So if we all just take our blinders off for a minute and face reality, we have to realize that in a few short years, many of the western states, and much of Europe, just will not have enough water for the population. Oh, they'll have salt water all right, from the oceans, but they will not have enough fresh water for drinking or for their crops. And you know, as we reach the tipping point in those states, they're just going to have to do what every third world country does, and start rationing. And down here in Latin America, where water tables in some places are so low, they go down 500 feet. The fact is, most big cities down here in Latin America are at 500 feet or even worse. And that's why if you have municipal city water down here, they ration it and only
[02:25] give it to you a few hours a day. And they never give it to you at full blast, like you're used to getting it from your faucet up in the first world. So what they do is they give it to you a couple hours a day and at very low volume. And when you open your faucets all the way, the water comes out only about the thickness of a pencil most of the time. That is, unless you live in a subdivision or colony that has its own well, which I always recommend, a colony with its own well. And if you have your own well, you'll always have water. Because even as the water table drops even more, and it will, you're paying a hefty maintenance fee to keep that water flowing. So naturally, because your subdivision is private, your maintenance guys will sink that well even lower when necessary. As long as you keep paying, they'll keep digging. But not every expat or expat wannabe can rent or buy a place that has its own private well.
[03:14] And the fact is, 95% of all the cities in Latin America are hooked up to municipal water supplies which, like I said in a past show, are very substandard. Like almost everything else government does, whether it's in the third world or the first world. Only down here in the third world, the definition of bad government takes on a whole new meaning. Anyway, expats and expat wannabes take note here. Although you should always look for a place that's supplied by a private well, you should take note that subdivisions with their own wells, that are not on municipal water, are always more expensive. And a little more exclusive. And if you rent or buy a house in an older part of the city, even if the house is spectacular, you just might be connected to city water. And in that case, there's no way around it. And here's the thing about having wells that are 500 foot deep.
[04:02] That means your water is as far down in the earth as a 50 story building, which is about half the length of the empire state building. So, imagine you have to sink a pipe that far down just to get to that water. And though it's no easy task, it's done a lot these days. Oil companies sink pipes miles and miles down, but they have the money and resources to do it. So by any standards, driving a tube 500 feet down is big money. But that's not the only problem. Once you do hit the water table, water is very heavy. So the farther down you sink a pipe, the larger the pump motor needed to get it out. And the bigger the pump, the more expensive it is and the more electricity it uses when it's pumping. So the farther down your water table is, the more expensive your water bill is going to
[04:48] be. And it's not linear. It's a multiplier effect. But municipal water supplies working off wells are almost always way behind the eight ball as the water table drops. And instead of investing the money to sink their pipes down farther, they just let the population suffer with a gradual loss in volume and flow. And when that diminishes to a certain point, then comes the rationing, which now affects almost every single big city in Latin America. So the first thing that happens is your water gets really expensive, as they try to put on bigger pumps to suck out every last drop of water without digging down deeper like they really should. And the second thing that happens is you only get water part of the day. And the third thing that happens is when your water finally does come, it comes at a very low volume out of your faucet.
[05:35] So there comes a time with every area that has water shortages where families just can't make do with the limited amount of water that the municipality provides for them anymore. So what the people end up doing is, first, they buy a cistern, which is an emergency water storage tank for your house that comes in two types, either a plastic one that goes on your roof, which is the cheap way to go. And that's why 95% of Latins install that kind. Or they go the second, much less common, but much more expensive route, and install a concrete underground cistern, which is an infinitely better choice than the plastic rooftop job. Because the concrete jobs are virtually indestructible, last pretty much forever, and hold about ten times more water than one of those flimsy rooftop plastic jobs.
[06:21] Now down here in Latin America, people don't have discretionary income, so you see those plastic rooftop jobs everywhere. And I have to tell you, they're really ugly. What an eyesore. From a distance, most lower and middle class neighborhoods look like their roofs are covered with white, blue, and black mushroom spores, which makes the whole urban landscape look even more hideous than it otherwise does. And unfortunately, those are the three ugly colors rooftop cisterns come in. I guess nobody's figured out yet that if they made them in rooftop clay colors and earth tones, then they'd blend in and everybody's neighborhood would look a lot nicer. But unfortunately, this is the third world. Now there's a job opportunity for expats, come out with a cistern that comes in non-obtrusive pleasing colors, because the locals will never do it.
[07:08] Now very few locals down here have the money to buy a permanent cement underground cistern, but it's almost always better to have one of those. And because it's underground and not taking up any space at all, a lot of people have them under the garage driveway slab, with just a little metal or cement access cover when you have to get in it to clean it, which should be done at least once a year. Though latins almost never do it, unless the cistern has some kind of a major problem. And eventually they do get dirty inside. Because cisterns are not exactly hermetically sealed, nor should they be. They need a little aeration, which means a certain amount of dirt, dust, insects, and other nasty little critters often take up residence inside that space. In fact, I once bought an existing house down in Costa Rica, and when I pulled the access cover off that cement cistern, I found a dead iguana and two dead rats floating in
[07:57] the water. Which means the guy that owned that house certainly never had that thing cleaned out once. And after that, I felt really creepy every time I had to switch over to the cistern water. Even though I had my maintenance guy empty the cistern, and had him rinse and scrub the walls down twice with Clorox, but still every time I took a shower, I had a mental image of those rat carcasses floating around in there. And I know right now I'm probably giving some of you expat and expat wannabe women up there the creeps. But things like that don't normally happen with expats. But with Latins, stuff like that happens all the time because they just don't believe in preventive maintenance. And by the way, when I said I got the creeps when I switched over to the cistern, that's because every cistern is in reality a backup system. So if you're hooked to municipal water and get that water 4 or 6 hours a day, as long
[08:43] as you have water pressure, the cistern is constantly filling up from your municipal water supply. Just like the tank on your toilet after you flush it, it's constantly filling up. And that little mechanism with the ball inside your toilet tank is exactly the same one they use inside cisterns to stop it from overflowing when it's being filled. In fact, it's called a ball cock mechanism. And when you look into a cistern, you'll see it looks exactly like the one in your toilet tank, only a bit more heavy duty. Anyway, when you're getting that municipal water 6 or 8 hours a day, your cistern is on standby and just waiting to come online when it's needed. So when your municipality arbitrarily cuts your water off for however many hours they feel like it, the electric pump that's attached to your cistern automatically kicks in.
[09:29] And normally you never notice if it's the municipal water you're getting or the cistern water because normally it's a very smooth transition. But if your cistern is close by to you, you'll hear the electric pump kick in and you'll know it's the cistern that's supplying the water. So the problem is, what happens if you have that backup cistern but you don't have electricity? Now that happens a lot down here. And if you don't, and at the same time you don't have municipal water, the cistern pump won't have electricity so you won't get water out of your cistern tank either. But remember that's only a problem if you have an underground concrete cistern. It's not the same if you have a plastic cistern on your roof. Then you'll still have water even if you don't have electricity, but I'll talk about that case in a few minutes so hold on. So anyway, if you have a concrete underground cistern, that's another reason why I recommend
[10:18] every expat have a small gas or diesel generator around the house just for that purpose, for when your electricity goes out. And if you have a nice solar panel electric system, that would even be better. I talked about solar electric panels on a previous show, so if you want to look that show up, check the archives. So now I've given you one of the few downsides to having a concrete cistern underground. It works with an electric pump and you need electricity to make it happen. But if you don't have electricity and you're desperate, you can always open the hatch, throw a bucket down in there and haul the water up manually. The same way pioneers and homesteaders got water out of their wells 100 years ago, back in the days when they didn't have electricity yet in a lot of the rural areas in the United States. Or you can always buy for about 30 bucks one of those nifty hand pumps that they use to
[11:05] pump water and oil out of 55 gallon drums. You've seen those haven't you? They've got a long plastic or metal tube that goes into the liquid, and at the business end you have a crank pump, and you should be able to pump about 2 gallons a minute out of there. Which is enough for basic drinking water, toilets and hand washing, but that's about it. Don't expect to fill your bathtub or your washing machine that way. But there's another big advantage to having a cement cistern, besides the fact that it'll last you a lifetime. And believe it or not, if they're made correctly, they're even earthquake proof. Though the rest of your house might collapse or fall off a cliff, your concrete cistern will survive. They're a one piece solid square box of thick cement, reinforced with metal rebar, and painted with a high density epoxy on the inside to hold in the water. So even if you experience a pretty healthy earthquake, that cistern itself will vibrate
[11:54] a lot, but it's very unlikely that it'll crack or break, and the earth around it might give a little, but your cistern won't. But the big advantage to having one of these cement cisterns is the fact that you can make it really big. 10 or even 20 times as big in volume as one of those big plastic cisterns that you see on all those rooftops. Now some of those big rooftop plastic cisterns I'm talking about can hold up to 1000 liters of water, which is about 250 gallons. And since the average wasteful American uses minimally 50 gallons of water per day, one of those big plastic rooftop cisterns I'm talking about is only going to last the average family of four just a little more than a day, if the municipal supply is completely cut off. Now the thing is, a day's worth of water reserves might be sufficient most of the time, but
[12:43] as this water problem gets worse and worse, and municipalities in the first world start rationing their water too, you're going to find that sooner or later, municipalities are going to turn your water off for more than a day at a time, and then you're going to be screwed. And that's happening down here right now, and I promise you it's a preview of what's going to happen up in the first world very soon. And that's what's so nice about having one of these cement cisterns, you can make it almost as big as you want. In fact the one I have right now under my garage floor slab is 8 foot wide by 8 foot long by 6 feet deep. Imagine a king size bed that's about 6 foot high. That's all the space it takes up under my garage floor slab. Now that cement cisterna mine holds 3000 gallons of water. And that's enough water to last a family of 4 wasteful Americans about 15 days.
[13:30] Not one day, like with one of those plastic rooftop cisterns, I'm talking a little more than 2 weeks. So all you expats and expat wannabes out there, take note. Get a cement cistern if you can, and make sure it holds at least 3000 gallons. And I recommend all you first worlders up there who are not planning on becoming expats. You'd do well to get yourself one of these cement cisterns too, especially if you live in one of those dry western states that are at the tipping point right now and are set to run out of water in the next few years. Now if you want to have one of these cisterns built up in the first world, it's gonna cost you $3,000 to $5,000 I'm sure. However if you're a do it yourself kind of guy, you and your buddies could probably do it in a weekend for under a grand, not counting the 6 pizzas and the 3 cases of beer. Now down here in Latin America, with labor being as cheap as it is, you could get 2 skilled
[14:17] guys to build a cistern like that in a weekend for about 1200 bucks including all the materials. And since none of the water sitting in your cistern is under high pressure, there's nothing really critical to worry about in any stage of the construction. And if you just google cistern construction, you'll find dozens of very simple plans. And if you need some hand holding, just shoot me an email, cause I've built a few myself. And I've even repaired a few old leakers in my time, and those were on badly built cisterns just slapped together by local latin workers. Because you see, you gotta keep your eye on latin builders, they take a lot of shortcuts just to save money. And when it comes to plumbing, they just don't like to clean PVC pipe ends with acetone or paint thinner. And that's really one of the critical steps when you join PVC pipes, right before you
[15:02] glue them together with PVC cement. And if you don't do that, you're asking for trouble. And latins just don't think in the long term. If it works now, it's okay with them, they don't care about one year from now. And when you join dirty pipe ends, they might not leak now, but they're gonna in the future, I'd guarantee ya. So as for plumbing and PVC plastic tubes, latins don't like to do that final cleaning step because a solvent is too expensive. And that's why down here in Latin America, there's an epidemic of PVC pipe joint failures. Which means in time, almost every plumbing job down here eventually springs a leak. And it's because latins just love to take shortcuts. And they'll save a few pennies today, even if the job suffers tomorrow. Because that's the way they do things down here. After they get paid and they're out of there, it's over.
[15:48] That's the last they want to see of you. They're divorced from the project. But back to water problems in cisterns. So definitely that cement cistern is the way to go. And the only real advantages of having one of those plastic rooftop cisterns is that you can buy it in one piece ready to go for just two to three hundred bucks. And it's normally a one man job and takes just a few hours to install. But its greatest advantage is that it's up on the roof and therefore doesn't need an electric pump like an underground cement cistern does. So if you need water from the plastic rooftop cistern, all you have to do is open a valve and gravity pulls the water right down to your faucets. And admittedly, with gravity feed, you don't get high pressure flow, but you do get a pretty decent stream of water, whether you have electricity or not.
[16:34] But there are big disadvantages to having a rooftop plastic cistern. One is, the hot tropical sun is always beating down on it, which means the water coming out of it is most likely going to be pretty warm. Which is no big deal and you might like that. But the harsh sun and the UV rays eventually degrade the plastic. So most rooftop cisterns might only last five to seven years. And the other big disadvantage is that they're fiberglass reinforced plastic, so they're light but very flexible and flimsy. So they're easily damaged. That means you don't want to lean anything against it, that's for sure. And because plastic expands and contracts a lot, between the hot sun and the day and the cooling at night, the pipe connections to it almost always end up leaking. And here's another big disadvantage, because these plastic cisterns are almost always located on the roof, they'd never put them on the ground because they're just too fragile.
[17:21] Anyway, on the roof, most people can only have a cistern that'll hold 250 gallons. You could get bigger ones, up to a thousand gallons, but people's roofs down here just won't support that kind of weight. So during one of the earthquakes, which they have quite often down here, you don't want to have a thousand gallons of water crashing down through the kitchen now, do you? And that's why almost no one ever has more than a 250-gallon cistern on the roof. Which really isn't enough for a big family, if the municipality cuts your water off eight or ten hours a day. Which is about what 40% of the Latin American cities do, and it's getting worse day by day. But the people don't have the money for cement cisterns, so what they've learned to do over the years is conserve. Something that North Americans are just starting to realize is a very good idea. Now for a change, everybody up North seems to be using water-saving appliances, not to
[18:10] mention water-saving showerheads and toilets. And I was shocked to see recently, in some restaurants up North, that they have a new high-tech kind of a urinal that says it's completely water-free. Which seems to me a little bit hard to believe, that something like that in a public bathroom, something that's used over and over again, could remain reasonably sanitary and still not have an overpowering stink. It just doesn't seem possible without water. But, that's what the little sticker on it claims. So what I'm saying to you people up North in the first world, you're already having water shortages up there, they're here to stay, and they're gonna get worse. And since that condition is nothing new for the people down here in the third world, you should take a good hard look at what they do down here to cope with the situation. Because you're gonna be in the same boat in a very short time. For example, a lot of city folks down here who get their water from city municipalities
[18:58] and routinely get their water cut off. Well, a lot of these folks end up buying a tank load of water or two from a private water delivery service a few times a month and sometimes every week. In fact, filling up cisterns is big business down here. And there are hundreds and hundreds of private water companies, some one-man jobs and some with fleets of tankers, that'll come to your house on quick notice and fill your cistern right up. And I predict that in the United States, that kind of service, private water delivery that is, is gonna be a huge growth industry. But down here in Latin America, no one enforces the law. The water delivery business is like the Wild West in a John Wayne movie. And here's how it works. If you want your cistern filled, it doesn't matter how big or small your cistern is. You pay for the whole truck load of water, which could be 500 or even a thousand gallons.
[19:48] So if you have a standard rooftop cistern that holds 250 gallons, well, you gotta look and you gotta pay the 10, 20 or 30 bucks or whatever it is for the whole 500 or 1000 gallon load. And that's why sometimes neighbors chip in and have a couple of their cisterns filled with one truck load. But as you might imagine, that's hard to coordinate because everybody uses their water at a different rate. So your cistern might be completely empty when your two next door neighbors have theirs three quarters filled. So the consumer almost always gets shafted on a deal like that. And the thing is, when you pay for a delivery like that, the driver does not like to split up his load and drive around to a bunch of neighboring houses. Most of the time they won't do it unless your neighbor's cistern tank is sitting right up on the roof adjacent to yours. Or of course, if you slip the guy a bribe. Now you see little tanker trucks like that all over the roads down here.
[20:36] And that's when you begin to realize how big a business this really is. Now I'm sure you must be wondering where these water companies actually get their water from. And you're wondering how pure it is. Because down here, like up in the first world, it's illegal to take water from lakes and rivers. So it might be natural to assume that all these water companies have dug their own 500 foot wells. Well if you're assuming that these guys have their own private water source, and that they're taking their water legally, well in the vast majority of cases you'd be wrong. The fact is, on some of my many trips to the countryside, I've seen these tanker trucks pulled over at rivers and lakes with their intake tubes in the water sucking it in directly. Which of course is completely illegal. But even if a fleet of cop cars happen to pass by and see exactly what the guy's doing,
[21:22] they'd never give it a second thought because not only are the police completely ignorant of water rights laws, they're completely ignorant of basic traffic laws. So basically, these tanker trucks aren't even clandestine about it. They just pull up to a lake or river, throw in their hose, suck out water, and they're on their way. And though a lot of the water tanker trucks down here are painted up real nice, and most of them have the generic Spanish words, agua pura, painted on them. Which means pure water in English. The truth is, it's absolutely not. Because when I spoke to one of those water tanker delivery guys, and I asked him if his water was filtered and pure, like the big painted letters said on his tank, he said sure, it's absolutely drinkable, filtered and pure. And I asked him, what kind of filtration do you use? And he climbed up to the top of his rig and pulled out a metal ring, which was right at
[22:12] the end of the intake tube, the part you stick in the river. It was about the size of a drink coaster, and it was nothing more than an aluminum ring with a piece of common window screen stretched between it. So I guess it did filter out rocks, mud, twigs, and organic lake and river junk, but anything smaller than a mosquito got through, because that's what it was, mosquito netting. So anything smaller than a mosquito, including bacteria, viruses, and any other organic gunk, is what you pay for when you get your cistern filled. And that was this guy's idea of pure water. But you know, he wasn't lying, it was filtered alright, if you want to call a window screen a filter. And then I said, you know, I wouldn't drink that water, that's not much of a filter at all. In fact, that's false advertising you got on your truck there. And then he gave me that typical look that Latins give gringos and first-worlders, when
[23:01] we say or do something that's completely normal to us up in the first world, but to them, seems like overkill, if not completely irrational, like for example, washing your hands before you eat. And then he said, look, all the dust and dirt and whatever that might get through that the filter doesn't catch eventually floats down to the bottom of the tank. So it's like having two filters, he said, the clean water that we supply the customers is skimmed off 20 centimeters above that, which works out to about eight inches above the bottom of the tank. Like that answer was supposed to satisfy me. And the way he said, whatever stuff does get through our filters, I mean, just the way he said the word filters made me think they had some elaborate triple stage filtering process instead of a five cent metal window screen. Anyway, he said they clean the filters all the time and they flush the bottom of the
[23:49] tank every night when they bring it back to the garage, which once again reinforces for me that you should always filter your own water and not trust any claims the Latins make about it. And for that matter, any claims they make about their food or air quality either. And then just to prove that I was an alarmist gringo idiot, he tapped off a little water and took a drink himself. Then he passed me a glass of water and it looked clean enough and it smelled neutral, but I didn't drink. And I shook my head no and made a face like I was saying, are you kidding? And he just pulled the same face he gave me before, which seemed to say, you'll get yours someday you pampered gringo. Now here's the thing, folks, I have a Latin newspaper in front of me that states that the World Health Organization admits that 95% of all natural freshwater sources in Latin
[24:39] America are contaminated well beyond World Health Organization standards. And the water should not be ingested by humans unless properly treated, which in of itself is very bad news and a real indictment of the cluelessness and the pathetic educational levels of the Latin culture. But then again, that's what they said about the rivers and lakes in the United States back in the 1960s and 70s, before they cracked down and started really enforcing those EPA laws. Back when, if you lit a match, you could set the Chicago River on fire. Yep, those were the days alright. Now you might think that 95% World Health Organization number is pretty dismal and you might think they're exaggerating, but believe me it's true. The people down here have absolutely no interest in preserving their environment.
[25:27] Only first world tourists, tree huggers, and expats have any interest in that. And every time I see a river, lake, or beach cleanup effort where people get together and pick up garbage, it's always initiated by a first world environmental group, or a group of first world residents, or someone who makes his livelihood off the tourist trade, like a beachfront, restaurant, or hotel owner. And if they're Latins, they're not really interested in cleaning up the environment, they're just interested in attracting the tourist dollar. And foreign tourists don't like dirty beaches. And as far as those few countries that do enforce their environmental laws to some degree, like Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile, it doesn't matter. Those private water tanker companies still illegally pull their water out of lakes and rivers, however they do it clandestinely. Most of them have handshake deals with certain farmers and landowners out in the boonies
[26:17] that have rivers and lakes on their properties. So a tanker truck can dip his hose in there, without anyone knowing at all except the farmer that he's just paid off. Farmers are quick to take the money and look the other way, as long as taking the water doesn't hurt their own crop irrigation schemes. And just as an aside, down in Latin America, where do you think the vast majority of sand and pea gravel comes from? You know, for road construction and general building? Well, you probably guessed it. Big and small construction companies alike go to rivers and lakes and dredge out the raw materials right there, even though it's completely illegal. And if you don't believe me, just take a ride along any big riverbed down here in Latin America. And eventually, you'll see a bunch of disordered piles of sand and gravel and lots of evidence
[27:02] of riverbanks that have been dredged out. And sometimes you'll see a guy in a dump truck or a backhoe helping himself to the stuff. And again, a fleet of cop cars could drive by and not a one would stop. In fact, they wouldn't even know these guys were breaking the law. That's how disconnected theory is from reality down here. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, all those private water company tanker trucks that steal that water from public sources, they always seem to have a generous stock of Jesus stickers on their bumpers. God helps those who help themselves, right? You've been listening to The Exped Files, living in Latin America. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America. The Exped Files at gmail.com.
[27:49] That's theexpedfiles at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.