AGUA PARA LA VIDA

Why We Must Harvest the Monsoon Rains

Tikkun’s Agua Para la Vida project repairs village-scale rainwater reservoirs and surrounding watersheds to improve water security and ecological health in rural communities.

San Miguel de Allende receives its rain during the short summer monsoon season. But with climate change, rains are becoming less reliable and severe drought more possible. We are facing a future of water crisis.

The rural communities which comprise 60% of the population of San Miguel are most vulnerable to the impacts. They already suffering water scarcity, related land degradation and loss of livelihoods.

Historically, large rainwater capture reservoirs, or bordos, have sustained these communities through the long dry season, which lasts most of the year. However, rural electrification at the end of the 20th century created a new reliance on deep-drilled electric wells. San Miguel’s rainwater reservoirs were neglected and many were abandoned. Today they are filled with silt, their dams are broken, and they no longer hold enough water to last the dry season.‍ ‍

Meanwhile, in recent decades our local aquifers have been drained for export agriculture by large- scale agribusiness. The deep electric wells are now running dry. As the water table and aquifer levels drop, wells have become contaminated with toxic levels of heavy metals like arsenic and flouride, causing serious childhood illness in rural communities.

Further impacting this crisis in the Rio Laja watershed is widespread loss of trees to deforestation, over-grazing and over-development. This creates erosion and soil compaction, more heat and less rain, in a destructive cycle known as the watershed death spiral.‍ ‍

This process of desertification can be reversed and water security restored.