Is San Miguel Really About to Do This?

You may have already received or signed the Change.org petition protesting the construction of a 4th golf course in San Miguel— the one that would be placed practically on top of El Charco del Ingenio. As of the publication of this article the petition has more than 92,000 verified signatures. Launched by local resident Daira Xitlali Jiménez Villasana, it's made its way through the usual channels: a post in the Civil List San Miguel Facebook group, your WhatsApp chats.. It lays out the stakes point by point — water, biodiversity, contamination, heritage — under the hashtag #SaveTheCharcoDelIngenio.

Underneath the petition, the outrage, the shares and re-shares, there's an actual question we should all sit with: is San Miguel really about to sacrifice the beautiful countryside that surrounds, protects, and feeds El Charco del Ingenio…. for a 4th golf course?

The short answer, as of this writing, is: nobody fully knows — including, it seems, the people in charge of knowing.

Here's What We Actually Know (Not Much)

Here's the timeline, condensed from a year of contradictory headlines, with links to where each statement was actually made or reported.

In September 2025, Lorena Ochoa — Mexico's most celebrated golfer, a name that opens doors here — announced on social media that she was designing a new course in San Miguel with her partner, golfer Rafael Alarcon. The post did not survive the week. I've found no report of her addressing the project publicly since.

That not-knowing turned out to be the whole story for the next several months. By late November 2025, Periodico Correo noted that the mayor, Mauricio Trejo, confirmed a letter had arrived asking whether the city would consider a fourth golf course, "hasta ahí" — "that's as far as it goes", he said. By April 2026, he was naming a specific site: the upper part of San Luis Rey, which he then rejected as unsuitable, floating alternatives toward Dolores Hidalgo or the Celaya highway instead. In July 2026, he told reporters the whole thing was stalled: no paperwork on his desk, no water-feasibility filing with SAPASMA, nothing to act on. That's his most recent statement I've been able to confirm.

"The Worst Place Imaginable"

And then, in August 2026, El Charco del Ingenio's own monthly bulletin said otherwise. The botanical garden reported that details of the project had finally emerged – the project, golf course and real estate development both — is alive, and sited on a rustic property directly to the north of the reserve, bordering the ecological preservation zone. Its own words for the location: "el peor lugar imaginable." The worst place imaginable. That hurts.

Mayor Trejo said on September 16 that a project would be respected if it meets the rules, and municipal authorities have asked that any course stay off the city's supply water and treat its own wastewater (Meteored). Lorena Ochoa's team has said she doesn't own the land, that the owner hired the design firm she partners in, and that the project is at pre-design stage with permits pending, according to El País as relayed by Más Información. On September 18, Guanajuato Governor Libia Dennise García Muñoz Ledo said there is no authorization for a new golf course in San Miguel.

According to a post from digital publication Mas in September 2026, "Mario Hernández, director of El Charco del Ingenio, pointed out that San Miguel de Allende has around 72,000 inhabitants in the municipal seat alone and already boasts three golf courses. According to the environmentalist, the new development would not only include an 18-hole course, but would also incorporate a vineyard, a residential area, a high-rise shopping center, and gas stations."

What's Already In the Water

The numbers behind our water-crisis are not abstract. Caminos de Agua, the local nonprofit that has spent over a decade testing wells across the watershed, puts the region's groundwater decline at 1-3 meters a year in some areas — water that thousands of area communities depend on. As the table drops, what's left comes up laced with arsenic and fluoride; a 2025 review of municipal records found 12 of the city's 25 water sources exceeded safe limits at least once in the past decade.

What Nutrient Pollution Looks Like Once It Arrives

None of that is caused by a golf course that doesn't exist yet — but it's the water table any new course would be drilling into. Downstream, the Presa Allende offers its own cautionary tale: since 2021, the reservoir has been fighting an invasion of water hyacinth that at times covers 75% of its surface, according to Mexico News Daily, fed by nutrients from untreated wastewater and agricultural runoff. Nobody has tied that particular bloom to golf course fertilizer — the causes on record are sewage and farmland — but it's a fair preview of how fast nutrient pollution moves through this watershed once it's in the water.

When I first moved here in early 2022, I heard about the opportunity to volunteer at the Presa, pitchforking liria up onto the shore so it could be dried and used for other things…. I found it so depressing and devastatingly "unfixable" that I never went back.

Volunteers fight a losing battle against the liria in April 2022 (Photo Marni Hills)
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One Million Gallons a Day, Give or Take a Desert

Forget about data centers - the amount of water needed to keep a golf course green, according to an NPR piece citing Audubon International, averages 312,000 gallons (1,180,000 liters) per day, and up to 1 MILLION GALLONS (3,785,411 liters) a day for a desert location like Palm Springs. For a Mexico figure, SinEmbargo cites water management consultancy Fluence: 200 million gallons (757,082,356 liters) a year for a 60-hectare course.

San Miguel already has three high desert courses:
Club de Golf Malanquín, the oldest, dating to 1970;
Zirándaro, a smaller 9-hole executive course tied to its own residential development;
Ventanas de San Miguel, an 18-hole Nick Faldo design, considered the most prestigious of the three.

A fourth golf course in San Miguel, covering 70 hectares on the doorstep of the one reserve the city has formally sworn to protect, is a different kind of proposition entirely. The whole municipality declared back in 2006, not to touch this beautiful natural location, an "Ecological Preservation Zone", which covers 392 hectares. According to the Charco del Ingenio, "Without any public consultation or studies regarding environmental impact and water feasibility, the municipal government illegally altered the use of soil in 2021 to allow a high-density real estate development."

Hasta Ahí — Until It Isn't

I don't think Mayor Trejo is secretly plotting to pave over a treasured sanctuary that protects endangered cacti and other plants and animals. He's a mayor who has said that he's not against golf courses in principle, if they meet all legal requirements. The trouble is that each new report seems to show that this project is progressing, and — going by the public record, at least — the public keeps finding out about it after the fact, from a bulletin or private citizen.

Lorena Ochoa, for her part, hasn't addressed the criticism publicly since that first announcement disappeared. I couldn't find a statement from her anywhere in the record since — which isn't proof of silence, exactly, just the limit of what's been reported.

What the petition can't tell you — what no petition can — is what happens next. What it can tell you is that a lot of people who don't usually agree on much have found, unexpectedly, a shared instinct: some ground here isn't ours to "improve."

Sign or view the current signature total on the petition: Change.org.

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Marni Hills is a QHHT Practitioner, writer, photographer, and lover of all things weird and unusual. She is an ancient astronaut theorist, dog foster, DJ, and is obsessed with travel, fashion, the Gaia Channel, never-before-seen footage, and mountaineering disasters. She made San Miguel her home in early 2022.

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