Poison in the Well

I was checking the book of our English class before writing this post, and while shifting the pages of the lesson ¨The Water We Drink,¨ I ran into the song ¨Poison in the Well.¨ The title of this song made think of the water we drink in Dominican Republic, and its quality. So I decided to make some research on this topic, and this is what I found.

Several factors affect the quality of drinking water in the Dominican Republic, including: poor condition of purification systems, minimal operational controls, low levels of maintenance of treatment plants and mainly the intermittent systems.

38.4% of water systems have no chlorination system installed. In rural areas, those schemes are mostly small systems. Having a chlorination system does not guarantee that the water is, indeed, properly disinfected.

According to figures for 2002 provided by the service providers, only 73.6% of drinking water samples analyzed demonstrated a satisfactory quality (as measured by the absence of total coliforms), while the international standard is 95%. It should be noted that the presence of coliforms, in itself, does not pose a health hazard, but their presence itself is an indicator of the potential presence of pathogens.

These information made me very sad and disappointed of my country. It made me realize that authorities are playing with people´s health, and that we, citizens, are not aware of this situation. The authorities need to do something to chance these percentages in the quality of the most precious mineral, which is extremely important for living. Until when are we willing to let authorities get away with these kinds of concerns? I believe Dominicans should stop people from poinsoning the well.

Virginia Mateo.