The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has awarded the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) $200,000 for a two-year project to study water quality in Latin America. The grant is intended to help the development of strategies to combat the decline in both water quantity and quality, a growing problem in much of Latin America.

In Mexico, for example, cities such as Mexico City, Aguascalientes, Querétaro, and Morelia are all pumping water at 150 to 180 percent of the natural recharge rate. The result has been the diminution of aquifers and the specter of severe water shortages. Similarly, the Colorado River, which is shared by Mexico and the United States, is over-allocated by international treaties, creating conflicts between the two countries over competing uses of the water. Compounding this problem is the rapid decline in water quality. Rapid population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and agriculture all are contributing to this deterioration. A prime example of this is the contamination of the Lerma River that runs through four Mexican states and empties into Lake Chapala. The previously rich and diverse fish population of the lake has been devastated.

The Hewlett grant for the Latin American Water Quality Project will be administered by clacs, which was recently ranked in the national Title VI competition as one of the nation's top programs. The research project will include faculty from four MSU colleges and be coordinated by Professor Scott Whiteford, director of the center. An anthropologist, Whiteford has written extensively on water management and security issues. Partnering with MSU will be faculty from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina.

The first step in the study will be a workshop in which participants from all of the participating institutions come together to discuss the broad outlines of the work to be accomplished and methodologies that can be used to accomplish it. The next step will be to form teams of the multinational participants who will meet and continue to work with local stakeholders in examining and evaluating water quality issues in their particular regions. Aiding this work will be both a listserv and a Web page. Upon completing its work, each team will submit its findings at a final project seminar. These seminar papers will be published in English and Spanish.

"Thanks to the Hewlett Foundation," Whiteford commented, "MSU faculty have a special opportunity to work with Latin American colleagues to address one of the most basic-yet complex-development issues. We look forward to the challenge."

-John Bratzel