Potable water for 400 in rural Mexico

Greetings from CATIS Mexico.

 It's with great excitement that I share this update with you regarding regarding the rainwater harvesting campaign underway.  Dylan Terrell, Executive Director, has been working in conjunction with Padre Juan Carlos Zesati and the San Cayetano Community Center to coordinate communities in northern Guanajuato who will participate in the rainwater cistern construction and educational project. Padre Juan Carlos is a more recent arrival to the area, and community outreach worker - Lucha Villafuerte, from the Coalition for the Defense of the Independence Aquifer (CODECIN) - wisely reached out to him when he arrived at his new parish two years ago. Since then, he has been a "mover and shaker" in his region finding solutions for the small communities he serves (not just his parishioners), which happen to be communities with the highest levels of groundwater contamination in the entire watershed. In the past year, CATIS and Padre Juan Carlos, along with partners in local community organization CEDESA and CODECIN, have organized a workshop on how to build rainwater cisterns, a day-long course on the situation on water contamination in the region, as well as coordinate an event surrounding “World Water Day” at the San Cayetano community center. More than 300 people traveled from rural communities in four different municipalities throughout the watershed to learn about the water exploitation and contamination problems in the region, solutions, and new policies being pushed that could further worsen the water problems in the region (and throughout Mexico).

Moving forward, there are currently 10 cisterns slated for construction at the end of this month.  The final dates will be set next weekend at CODECIN’s monthly meeting. Currently there are eight cisterns planned for the communities of Adjuntos de San Jose and Los Cuates.   Both communities currently have no access to water (contaminated or otherwise), and consequently several families will share each cistern.  There are also two schools ready to build cisterns.  A combined elementary/middle school - close to Adjuntos de San Jose - in the community of Las Palomas will be built first. They also have no water access. The second school cistern, to be built in an elementary school in the community of Arenal, will be utilized as a local educational workshop. People from neighboring communities and key actors from the region will be invited as a way to train others in rainwater harvesting as well as learn about the regional water issues. Arenal is a small community that receives water from the community of Exhacienda de Jesus: the drinking well with the some of the highest fluoride and arsenic contamination in the entire region (roughly 12 and 7 times above allowable limits respectively).  

The communities and schools have agreed to supply the sand and gravel needed for the construction of the cisterns. This reduces the costs, and if you look at the budget, you will see that we are already "beating the numbers"!  With these ten cisterns, along with the cistern previously built on the CATIS Mexico Institute site, we are coming in under budget. In fact, once these cisterns are built, we believe that we will still have funds to build at least one more cistern (and perhaps two!).

We will keep you posted about our activities. Please keep us in mind for future donations! This year the rains began early (in May) and it is likely that we will "close" this campaign shortly.  Be on the look out for new plans and, as always, thanks for supporting CATIS Mexico and the Independence Watershed Region.

Thanks,

CATIS Mexico

p.s. The photo that accompanies this report was from a rainwater cistern building workshop organized last year. This workshop inspired this campaign. We hope that this year's builds also inspire many more rainwater harvesting projects in the area.