Wastewater Treatment Project for Palma Soriano, Cuba: Assessment of Cultural and Ecological Conditions

Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society • Vol. 2, Nr. 1 • Summer 2014 Wastewater Treatment Project for Palma Soriano, Cuba: Assessment of Cultural and Ecological Conditions DANIELA PENA CORVILLON a a. Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley. Email: [email protected] Submitted: 26 January 2014; Revised 2 June 2014; Accepted for publication: 6 June 2014; Published: 10 June 2014 Abstract The Palma Soriano’s Wastewater Treatment Project is a proposal to use cultural identity as a trigger to reverse ecological degradation. The research methodology draws From environmental, social and urban analyses to unveil the best strategy to address the ecological, river restoration, agricultural, and water treatment challenges in Palma Soriano, southeast Cuba. The primary objectives are to provide a better quality of liFe and to create new opportunities For the local community to reconnect with natural cycles of water and the cultivation oF their own land. The research shows that stopping the processes oF desertiFication combined with Forest restoration of the upper of the Cauto River, where Palma Soriano is located, is critical to the achievement of these objectives. The project promotes the strength and capacity of local people to protect their own environment by proposing a community-based master plan For public spaces, cultivation areas, new sanitary and storm water treatment inFrastructure, and restored natural landscapes on the Cauto River. The project includes natural wastewater treatment, reforestation, community urban agriculture and a public commons along the river. This project will produce healthy water recycling, provide a potable water source for the city, encourage ecological restoration of the riparian zone, and provide new opportunities For Food production. It is derived From and designed to preserve the cultural identity oF the local community, and to restore the essential balance between the community’s need to sustain itselF and the natural environment. Keywords: Water Treatment; River Restoration; Community Identity; Local Food Production; Introduction The impetus for this water treatment The research is presented in the context project is the interest in local of ecological design – an emerging communities with strong spiritual ties to framework for re-envisioning the built their environment – where a close environment in terms that encourage relationship between culture and the dynamic, positive, and mutually environment is cultivated and nourished beneficial interaction between humans (Heidegger, 1951; Norberg-Schulz, and the ecological world (Mozingo, 1980). This article explores some of the 1997). This paper is a proposal for an dilemmas that arise when the human ecologically based water treatment need for water quality and food project for Palma Soriano in Southeast overpowers the ability of the natural Cuba: It is also a proposal For re- ecosystem to support the demands. imagining the complex web of Corvillon, Daniela Pena. (2014). Wastewater Treatment Project For Palma Soriano, Cuba: Assessment oF Cultural and Ecological Conditions, Future of Food: Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society.2(1): 38-51 ISSN-Internet: 2197-411X / OCLC-Nr.: 862804632 39 Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society • Vol. 2, Nr. 1 • Summer 2014 interactions among people, the built exchanges of materials and energy with human environment, community the environment (Fischer-Kowalski, identity, urban agriculture, and the 1997; Martinez-Alier, 2009). supporting natural ecosystem. In order to achieve such a solution, this paper first identifies a potential community Methodology and environmental problem. Second, it develops an analysis of the area and recognizes the main problem. Third, it It has been essential for the research to presents an integral solution of the combine quantitative and qualitative problem. And finally it discusses this data in order to develop an integrated specific project in relation with a global solution. The fragility of the ecosystem context, and evaluates the solution and the necessary participation of the proposed as a solution For other areas community in this process require a that have been affected by similar social specific methodology that incorporates and environmental injustices. fieldwork and secondary analysis. The challenge of working with little or no The research project also uses a socio- existing data has required extensive data metabolic perspective on the “end of the collection by the author, using advanced pipe” issues of water quality and social mapping techniques of GIS disadvantage (Martinez-Alier et al., (Geographical Information System), field 2010), understanding “social observation, site analysis, and a metabolism” as the manner in which community survey. human societies organize their Figure 1 Site Map: Satellite image of Cuba 2012.The Palma Soriano research area is located in Southeastern Cuba, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, headwaters of the Cauto River (Source: - Google Earth) The Community marginalized communities of Afro- Haitians who began settling here after The city of Palma Soriano is located in the abolition of slavery in Haiti in 1868 the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, at the (Nunez Jimenez, 1998). headwaters of the Cauto River (Figure1- Site Map). Palma Soriano is the biggest The spiritual and artistic centre of the city in the Cauto, with approximately Palma Soriano community is Ennegro. 124,000 habitants. The upper portion of Ennegro is an Afro-Haitian the 230-mile River, including Palma environmental art group that sees a Soriano, is home to poor and sacred relationship between ecology and ISSN-Internet: 2197-411X / OCLC-Nr.: 862804632 Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society • Vol. 2, Nr. 1 • Summer 2014 40 religion, giving spiritual values to the communities like Palma Soriano, which landscape. They believe their ancestors’ lacks access to foreign capital. In spirits and gods live in the native forest addition to deteriorating public health and that it is therefore extremely and quality of life, absence of public important to keep rivers and streams transportation, limited food variety, and clean and in continuous movement unstable energy support, the city has (Thompson, 1983). The spiritual frame serious problems with its potable water of reference extends to the cultivation of system. The municipality provides their land and the integration of human domestic water from the Cauto River in activities into the natural environment. a discontinuous system with erratic deliveries. The water quality is poor Ten years ago the Cuban Government with high levels of microorganisms that gave Ennegro a piece of land upstream cause serious health problems in the from the city, at the intersection of two population despite high levels of added tributaries, which, together, form the chlorine. Cholera is not unknown in Cauto River. The community had worked spite of public health efforts such as for years to obtain this land, reflecting sanitizing person’s hands and feet before their cultural agreement that this land entering public buildings. was a sacred and life-giving place. According to Martinez-Alier (Martinez- The proposed wastewater treatment Alier et al., 2010) “sacred places” for a project addresses water pollution and its particular community require just such associated problems by following a a cultural agreement. It is on this land holistic integrated-based ecological Ennegro is planning an agrarian approach consistent with the cultural spiritual community, where culture and identity and values of the local traditions would combine in the community. There are clear linkages cultivation of their own land. between the poor water quality in Palma Soriano and the ecological balance in the The community is proposing to build Cauto. The project proposes a natural upon a Vatn concept, which proposes to cycle using the sun, gravity, plant life and transfer a market economy to non- fisheries as elements to clean the market domains (Vatn, 2000). The effluent, thereby taking advantage of the responsibility for care and management cultural values that Ennegro has been of the environment in which they live cultivating for years and the spiritual would become that of the local cultural heritage of the local population. community, with their own production The public wastewater treatment within the public domain. This opens the project empowers the local community possibility of a socially responsible with social environmental responsibility restoration of the Cauto that has been and provides them an opportunity to critically damaged by agricultural integrate urban agriculture and natural exploitation in favour of coffee and sugar restoration of the borders of the Cauto during the last centuries (Scarpaci & by using recycled water for aquiculture, Portela, 2009). irrigation of fruit trees, and the restoration of the riparian forest of the The recent economic and cultural river. That Palma Soriano is the “Sister transformation of Cuban society from a City” of Berkeley, California with whom centrally controlled socialist economy it has an on-going cultural exchange into a new model of more independent opens the possibility of the citizens of private initiative has not been a smooth both cities contributing to the project transition, particularly for marginalized together. In 2012 Berkeley’s mayor and ISSN-Internet: 2197-411X / OCLC-Nr.: 862804632 41 Future

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