Water Problem at Sustag
What Gilbert is Doing to Deny Us Water & Destroy our Ecosystem

Note: All pictures below will ENLARGE if you click on them. All pictures below were taken in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 21, 2012. We have confirmed that this water theft scheme is taking place on OUR PROPERTY, and furthermore, Gilbert has confessed this to our neighbor, Pete, who took me to the site yesterday (again, August 21st).
We first noticed problems when we were no longer able to get much water from our arroyo. On August 21st, Pete, my neighbor, and I hiked up to our water capture point and realized that very little water was coming down our stream.
Looking south up the arroyo, it became apparent that the problem was that no water was feeding the stream. Even in the dry season, it is never this dried up. We knew it must have something to do with something Gilbert had done upstream.
This is a shot up the same stream. The ecosystem here is very important to us because our property is the site of an ancient pre-Incan civilization that has not yet been fully explored. The wall at the right is thousands of years old.
After hiking for an hour and an half up the arroyo, we found the problem. Essentially, Gilbert was capturing 100% of the water from a point on our property. The scene above is looking south from a small dam he build there.
This is the small dam which Gilbert built on our property. Unquestionably, Gilbert knows what's he has done because he even mentioned to Pete some time ago that he knew he was drawing water from our land.
Below the dam itself is a water capture device, built in concrete -- making it difficult to get rid of -- where Gilbert is capturing 100% of the water in the arroyo that comes to that point.
This is a closer shot of Gilbert's recapture device. You will note if you look closely at the enlargement of this photo that not one drop of water is flowing over the embankment. He's getting it all.
This is yet a closer shot of Gilbert's recapture device on our land. We checked where all water is going and found that Gilbert has built an extensive water piping system back to his land.
This is the last photo. It is an even closer shot of what Gilbert has built. What this series of photos DOES NOT show is the extensive system Gilbert has built to haul the water away from us.
The pictures at left were taken by a Canon camera and shot to ISO400 film. They show the dramatic drop in the water level to our capture point.
The purpose of Gilbert's project is to run his hydroelectric plant. While my family and our neighbors have to pay ETAPA for electricity, Gilbert gets all his electricity for free by using our water to run his hydroelectric project. Below Pete has drawn a map to show how Gilbert's water system works.
This is a better shot showing the area where we capture water for our personal needs.
Here you get a better look at the point where Gilbert captures the water for his hydroelectric plant. Notice, again, how no water goes to the arroyo.
Same area -- again, you can see that no water goes to down to our area. Gilbert is capturing 100% of the water.
Update for August 29, 2012
These pictures were taken on August 27, 2012. In the row above, we find that several days after Dr. Duran demanded that Gilbert's illegal recapture operation be destroyed it is still in full operation. Please note that not one drop of water proceeds down the quebrada, just as we see in the photographs above. This shows that Gilbert has no intention of following the law of official sanctions. In the fourth photograph, notice that the tube which Dr. Duran used to seal the water capture hole has been removed.
The picture at left is the donkey belonging to Gilbert which lives on our property -- despite repeated requests to have all of his animals removed. This is nothing compared the many cows that Gilbert has grazing on our property -- which will be the subject of the next set of pictures.