SAN JOSE RESTORATION HISTORY

In May of 2022, Tikkun began restoration of the historic reservoir in our pueblo of San Jose de Gracia. We are told that for over 200 years this reservoir served four villages, but had fallen into disrepair and was little more than a mud flat for most of the year.

Meanwhile, our local aquifer is being drained by the many export agribusiness farms in our valley, and our village well had run dry. A new, deeper well (up to 400 meters) was dug that serves five villages. Now our community is forced to ration, with each family receiving only two hours of well water a week for all their needs. This is scarcely enough for cooking and bathing, let alone growing food or maintaining livestock.

With the agreement, support and guidance of the village leadership and community, we restored the San Jose de Gracia reservoir in one month.

Using an excavator, bulldozers and trucks, we removed over 1400 truckloads of rich soil that had washed in from the surrounding farms. We dug a quarry, excavating hard tepotate to raise the pond edges and restore the dam, and we created better water management systems to prevent further erosion of soil into the water. We returned much of the soil to surrounding local farms, and with the rest we began a reforestation project around the reservoir.

Tikkun donated over 100 native tree saplings and hundreds of magueys. The San Miguel Municipal Ecology department donated 1000 native trees. Both villagers and expats volunteered to plant, including the elderly and children. Schools and universities also volunteered, camping out at Tikkun and rising early in the morning to work.

When the rains came and filled the reservoir, Tikkun stocked it with tilapia from our own ponds. The trees are now thriving in the rich soil, with a thick mulch of water hyacinths, and irrigation of captured rainwater.

Thanks to a grant from the San Miguel Community Foundation and other funders, in Spring 2023 we built a kiosk by the reservoir that is both a community meeting place and a solar pumping station to bring water from the reservoir up to the village. With donations from Don Pedro hardware store, we built a trough so families don’t have to walk all the way down to the reservoir to water their animals.

This is a model ecological restoration project that can significantly improve the health and resilience of the San Miguel community and the Upper Rio Laja watershed.