Restore 20 Ponds & Plant 50,000 Trees in SMA

Tikkun Eco Center is developing a project that can significantly impact food and water security in San Miguel de Allende, while creating community resilience to climate change.

San Miguel is located in the arid highlands of central Mexico. Our rural communities are experiencing drought, aquifer depletion and pollution, severe water rationing, and desertification. This will continue to drive dangerous migration to the U.S. border.

The good news is that solutions do exist, and can be implemented rapidly with community support.

In the past ten years at Tikkun we have moved aggressively to meet the challenges of climate change by building our own permaculture rainwater catchment systems and reforesting our arid land. In 2022, we used our experience to restore the historic rainwater reservoir in our village of San Jose de Gracia.

The city of San Miguel has recognized our project as a model for other communities. The Department of Ecologia has donated 50,000 NATIVE TREES toward the goal of restoring at least 20 more reservoirs in the next three years!

The restored reservoirs will allow communities to retain or reestablish small farms and milpas, and also commit to animal husbandry and milk production. They will also allow Tikkun to expand the program of installing organic food gardens for rural families near the reservoirs.

Mexico receives most of its rain during the short summer monsoon season. But across Mexico and throughout San Miguel, there exist many vitally important rainwater reservoirs that have suffered neglect for decades, due to lack of government funding. They are filled with silt and soil, and their dams have broken.

Restoring the reservoir in our village took one month, and expanded our community's capacity for capturing and retaining monsoon rainwater by over twenty-five million liters (see photos below). We also extracted over 1400 truckloads of rich soil, returning 25% to the surrounding farms, using the rest for a reforestation project to stabilize the land above the reservoir and create a beautiful community ecological park.

The San Miguel Department of Ecologia stepped up to donate 1000 native trees toward the reforestation. Over 60 people, both local villagers and expats, volunteered to plant the trees, including the elderly and children. Tikkun donated tilapia from our fish ponds to stock the reservoir. The municipality has agreed to build a playground and soccer field for the community children.

Currently, in January 2023, we are building a solar pumping station to bring water from the reservoir up to the village to support animal husbandry and local home gardens, which we help build.

This project also provides a positive use for the invasive water hyacinth fatally choking the city's major water reservoir, the Presa Allende, and the Rio Laja. Working with the Department of Ecologia, we used the hyacinth for compost and mulch for the tree saplings, which lowers the water needs by 50% and helps ensure their survival. The trees are all flourishing.

Please see our agreement with San Miguel department of Ecology here.

These projects will have a meaningful and long-lasting impact on the overall sustainability of San Miguel, as they can save hundreds of millions of liters of rainwater to survive droughts in the coming climate crisis, and create new green zones for ecological and community health. Throughout the world, amazing projects just like this are saving communities from food insecurity in regions similar to ours.

We are thrilled for the opportunity to serve the community, but we can only do this work with community financial support. Please donate and share this Go Fund Me with friends, families, and green funders looking for important projects that can make a difference.

Tikkun has spent 12 years developing our eco center using dryland Permaculture systems for rainwater capture, organic farming, running a COVID 19 food bank, and helping families in our rural village grow their own food gardens. Please learn more about us and our team here.

Tikkun Eco Center is a project of the Centro Por Ecologia y Economia Sustentable de San Miguel de Allende, A.C., a Mexican non-profit which is supported by the U.S. based Psephos Inc Climate Crisis Fund. Psephos is a 501c3 organization located in Davis, CA. All donations made to Psephos through Go Fund Me are tax deductible.

Donated funds will go directly towards engineering and rebuilding reservoirs, planting trees and transporting the hyacinths from the Presa Allende.

San Jose reservoir before restoration: A dried out mud flat.

After restoration: A beautiful small lake, 5 meters deep already attracting wildlife and livestock.

Excavating the reservoir.

A mountain of good soil excavated from the reservoir.

Community tree planting.

Students from UNAM traveled from the city of Leon to help.