Estrategia para mejorar el acceso al servicio de agua potable en un barrio informal: caso de estudio de la vereda granizal en el municipio de bello (Antioquia), entre los años 2020 y 2025

Abstract

Informal land occupation poses a twofold challenge for public administrations. On the one hand, they must regularize and formalize territories occupied without urban planning or basic services; on the other, they must simultaneously guarantee rights that cannot wait, such as access to drinking water. The rural district (vereda) of Granizal, in the municipality of Bello (Antioquia), is one of the largest informal settlements in the country. There, this tension became judicially enforceable: in 2020, the Council of State ordered several entities from different levels of government to guarantee water for the population “through any suitable means” while the legal, technical and territorial constraints that prevented a conventional solution were being overcome. This research analyzes the strategies implemented between 2020 and 2025 to improve access to drinking water in Granizal. It is a qualitative case study with a descriptive-analytical scope and an evaluative component. The process was reconstructed from judicial, institutional and technical sources, as well as semi-structured interviews with four officials from the Municipality of Bello. The chronology was organized into four analytical phases. The three solutions identified were evaluated against explicit criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, coverage, continuity, sanitary quality, accessibility, sustainability, territorial safety and governance: water supply by tanker trucks and community tanks, the alternative infrastructure project submitted for approval to the Ministry of Housing, City and Territory, and the system of humanitarian supply points with portable treatment plants. The results show that alternative solutions can guarantee a vital minimum of water when conventional service provision is not immediately feasible. However, their effectiveness does not depend solely on the installed infrastructure. It depends on how territorial conditions, risk management, sanitary quality, institutional capacity, funding, operation and community participation are articulated. The case also shows that a “temporary solution” that extends over several years should be understood as transitional infrastructure: it must be evaluated periodically and linked to a route towards a structural solution. Based on these findings, ten action parameters are proposed for the alternative supply of drinking water in vulnerable territories.