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A state newspaper report puts at some 5,000 the hand-dug wells opened in Las Tunas
Families in the province have dug some 5,000 wells as the water supply fails, according to Periódico 26 as reported by 14ymedio; an official warns about the proximity of septic pits and latrines, and bacteriological testing is limited by a shortage of reagents.
Residents of Las Tunas have dug some 5,000 hand-made wells in recent years in the face of persistent water supply failures, a figure that keeps growing, according to a report in the state-run Periódico 26 picked up by 14ymedio. Journalist Esther de la Cruz Castillejo puts the cost at about 20,000 pesos per metre of depth.
That outlay does not guarantee finding water: the reporter describes one local man who had dug 13 metres with no result, some 260,000 pesos.
The deputy delegate for territorial planning and urban development, Tania Vázquez Góngora, recalled that the rules require a minimum distance of 15 metres between wells and septic pits or latrines, hard to guarantee on urban plots of barely 150 or 200 square metres: "Sometimes you don't know whether your neighbour has septic pits or latrines at the back of the house, for example, closer than they should be to the well you are digging; and there you have the source of contamination." The lack of space even leads people to dig wells in pavements and public ground, where inspectors warn and fine, but "that is as far as our powers go."
Law 124 on Inland Waters, passed in 2017, does not require authorisation to extract groundwater for domestic use. The province also has 966 wells in what is called the hydraulic heritage, of which 124 are used to study the water table and salinity and 212 are supply sources, according to the deputy delegate for water resources, Erichel Martínez Betancourt, who did not say whether they are included in the roughly 5,000 hand-dug ones.
The official puts the city's water table at between four and five metres deep, depending on the season, and says the aquifer's water "is generally quite fit for consumption from a physical standpoint." Bacteriological conditions require specific tests, and the director of the Provincial Centre for Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology, Yumara Acosta García, told the state newspaper that "the situation with reagents is complicated," which limits those tests.
Las Tunas's water problem is not new: in November 2023, some 100,000 people in the province depended on water trucks and 90,000 residents had no service even though the main reservoirs were above 75% of capacity, because of two broken pumps. In October 2025, almost 20,000 inhabitants of the municipality of Jobabo went more than a month without water because of a breakdown whose repair was hampered by poor roads and a lack of fuel.
Sources: 14ymedio
Data updated: 2026-11-01T04:15:00.000Z