Used scraps of carpet plastered to dirt make for living room floors. Fences made of bed springs or stacks of old tires divide family plots along the crazy-quilt boundary lines laid out by private developers. Since their houses are not hooked into municipal systems, residents must improvise to meet basic needs. Drinking water is hauled in or acquired via shallow, dug wells that quickly become tainted by human waste, pesticide runoff, or heavy metals present in the surrounding soil. One group of researchers recently discovered a family using old ten-liter pesticide bottles to store water.
Scarcity means that water for bathing and cleaning comes from irrigation ditches.
Bathroom and kitchen wastes are usually disposed of in septic tanks or open cesspools. Most colonias have no regular trash collection. Given this situation, the grim health statistics of colonias are unsurprising. Although they can be found in all four U.S. border states, colonias are most common in Texas and New Mexico, primarily as a result of weak rural planning laws in those states. Traditional patterns of land ownership in Texas have meant that counties have little or no authority to regulate development in the countryside.