The beneficiaries
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by Mark Hill, Ecosystem Sciences Foundation (retired)

The late Bob Hass, past-president of Audubon de Mexico and environmental advocate sent me an email in early 2005 asking if I could investigate water issues and watershed conditions in the Rio Laja watershed. Bob and I had begun a correspondence when he began following our work in the Owens Valley of California. My organization, Ecosystem Sciences Foundation, was performing the largest watershed restoration project in North America at that time. From our correspondence, Bob learned how watersheds are degraded and possible interventions to restore them to functional ecological condition.

At Bob's request and based on his assessment of what the most pressing problems were in the Rio Laja watershed, I organized a team of experts from my group augmented with colleagues from U.S. universities. What was to be a one-week review turned into a three-week investigation.

In soon became apparent that our team needed to include local knowledge. Bob Hass introduced us to Don Patterson a long-time resident and archeologist familiar with the watershed. Don would later become the Director of Ecology for the San Miguel de Allende municipal government.

Don Patterson (right), former Director of Ecologia, and Dr. Raul Pineda, Professor Queretaro University
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Dr. Raul Pineda became a most valued colleague and advisor for his watershed knowledge and access to local people throughout the Rio Laja watershed. Dr. Pineda had established a curriculum at the University of Queretaro for students wanting to study watershed ecology.

We were also introduced to Dr. Marcos Adrian Ortega from NAUM's Center for Geosciences who was doing very sophisticated groundwater research on the Rio Laja and adjacent watersheds. Agustin Madrigal was working with rural people on water and environmental problems and would later form Salvemous de Rio Laja. Arturo Garcia through his organization Cuerpos de Conservación provided valuable examples of restoring eroded hillsides and arroyos.

Left to right: Agustin Madrigal, Mark Hill (Ecosystem Sciences Foundation), Arturo Garcia
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The team fanned out into the Rio Laja watershed; each expert focused on his specialty. We met frequently to exchange perceptions and coordinate information. Unfortunately, hard data on the watershed resources was seriously lacking. Only Dr. Adrian's research into the groundwater situation provided solid scientific data. And, as it turned out, Dr. Adrian's work was the most revealing and important.

At the conclusion of our review, the team presented findings at a public hearing in San Miguel de Allende. We listed and described the problems we identified in the watershed:

• severe erosion and loss of land annually to high flows in the Rio Laja
riverbank and uplands subject to erosion due to a lack of vegetation and the root systems necessary to hold soils in place, especially on steep slopes
• river channel widening resulting in shallow to no flow in the dry season with water restricted to stagnating pools
gravel harvesting with heavy equipment destroyed the river channel in many locations in the Rio Laja
• instream deposition of sediments that smother aquatic life
patchwork of shading resulting in high stream temperatures
overland flows that move pollutants and other toxic materials into the streams
• excessive head cutting of arroyos

Bob Hass, past-president Audubon de Mexico
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Many of these issues are the result of overgrazing by cattle and goats along the river and streambanks, on hillsides, and uplands. Furthermore, soil compaction contributes to the overland flow and runoff rate and the loss of water. Fires and woodcutting contribute to the lack of vegetation on slopes.

The team didn't stop at just describing the problems but offered solutions.

Overgrazing can be controlled with sound herd management that limits the number of livestock in an area or pasture and rotation of pastures combined with fencing of streambanks to prevent grazing of riparian (streamside vegetation).

Adoption of good grazing practice, however, is difficult for the people living in the ejidos, because they lack the resources to buy fencing or the horses and tack necessary to herd livestock to grazing areas more than a few kilometers from villages.

Irrigation practices also contribute to water loss throughout the watershed. Overland flooding to irrigate crops and sprinkler irrigation are the major sources of evapotranspiration in an ecosystem as arid as the Rio Laja watershed.

These poor and costly irrigation methods can be replaced with drip irrigation systems that use a minimal amount of water to grow crops, especially row crops and vegetables.

Terracing degraded hillsides will reduce hillside and overland erosion and, in time, can be grazed again with good livestock management. Building check-dams in arroyos will end head cutting and retain water and soil.

Hillside terraces
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The team concluded that the most pressing ecological danger to human health was water quality and quantity. The work by Dr. Adrian established several facts:

1) the Rio Laja aquifer is one, united groundwater system, which means agriculture and municipalities and private wells all use the same water source
2) the volume of water in the aquifer has dramatically declined from over pumping and extremely low recharge giving the municipality of SMA notice that its water supply would effectively disappear in 25-50 years at current use
3) the aquifer is naturally contaminated with high-levels of arsenic and fluoride. Arsenic is, of course, poisonous and fluoride causes dental mottling, brittle teeth, and skeletal fluorosis.

Ecosystem Sciences Foundation established a water quality test laboratory in SMA. The lab was headed by Julio Bernal. In time, lab equipment and reagents were procured, so that the lab could test for fluoride, arsenic, E. coli, pH, temperature, dissolved solids and other basic water quality parameters.

Julio Bernal, lab director with assistant.
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As the lab was completed Ecosystem Sciences Foundation was approached by a local medical NGO Dispensario de Fátima A.C. to test municipal village wells. Fatima field personnel identified incipient arsenic poisoning and fluorosis (brittle teeth) in village children. The source of the contamination was believed to be from village wells used for drinking water. The lab set out to test village wells throughout the municipality for arsenic and fluoride as well as other contaminants. In order to accomplish this, Don Patterson from Urban Development arranged a truck, an ice chest from SAPASMA, and to have Julio Bernal and Adrian Bustamante reassigned from the direction of Ecology and the Environment. Without any budgeted monies available in the three directions, Patterson was obliged to ask each direction in the municipal government to donate $50 pesos worth of gas slips so they could visit over 100 potable water wells in the municipality. Six months later, testing showed that most village wells were significantly contaminated some more than others.

Several solutions to provide safe drinking water for children were evaluated. Most were impractical or cost prohibitive such as trucking freshwater to villages or building reverse osmosis systems to remove arsenic and fluoride. Finally, it was decided to use a rain catchment system. The basic concept was to collect rainfall, treat and store it to provide safe drinking water at schools.

Drawing samples for testing.
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Ecosystem Sciences Foundation joined with the Direccion Medio Ambiente y Ecologia de San Miguel de Allende under the direction of Don Patterson, as well as Direccion de Desarrollo Urbano y Ordenamiento Territorial Municipio de Allende, SAPASMA, and with additional funding from UASLP, the International Renewable Resources Institute, and Rotary International.

With funding in place, Ilan Adler was contracted to install the region's first rainwater harvesting system (one of the first in Mexico) in Agustin Gonzalez. Two, in fact, one in the school and one in the medical clinic. The following year, he also helped install above ground rain harvesting systems in 10 other communities (including maintenance manuals).

Don Patterson, Julio Bernal and Ilan Adler
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Construction of rainwater collection systems began with a community effort to thoroughly clean the roof tops.
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Water collected on the roof is piped through a rapid sand filter into a cistern from which water is pumped to a drinking fountain and storage tanks.
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Paterson summarized the project; "I met with the community in the winter and by spring we started to build the systems. We finished a system for the school that would provide two liters of clean, potable water per day for each child. We also took into consideration a 4% population growth for the school over 10 years and certainly felt satisfied because of the results."

With additional funding from Ecosystem Sciences Foundation, Ilan Adler was able to use his NGO to replicate the success at Agustin Gonzalez in numerous other villages. The technology developed in this project is now commonplace throughout Mexico providing clean, healthy water to schools and villages.

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Mark Hill began his career with the World Bank as an Environmental Scientist following his undergraduate studies in Fisheries at Lansing College and Michigan State University; graduate studies in Limnology at Michigan State, and PhD studies in Aquatic Ecology at the University of Washington. His work with the World Bank took him to projects throughout Asia and Africa. He has worked on many of the major rivers of the world including the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Jamuna, the Megna, the Nile and, quite extensively, on the Mekong River.

Mark's devotion to San Miguel and the Rio Laja watershed continues even though he has figuratively retired from day-to-day operation of the company and foundation. He remains as an advisor to the ongoing Owens River project as well as several other projects in the U.S. Today Mark's great passions are fly fishing in Idaho and Montana, spin casting for lobina, and deep-sea fishing off the coast of Mexico. But his greatest loves are his family; his wife Jennifer their four children and 12 grandchildren, and his many, many friends in the US and especially Don and Marisela Patterson in Mexico, Jennifer Hass, wife of the late Bob Hass, Agustin Madrigal, Raul Pineda, and many others who share a common desire to make the Upper Rio Laja a good place to be.

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