Lomas de Cocina & El Ocote 24 Cistern Project Inauguration

5th May 2017 - Guest report by: Nate Fultz, President Rotary Midday

Wow Wow Wow. What a perfect day; cool breeze, clouds, great food, & a variety program.  The community of Lomas de Cocina & El Ocote are celebrating the completion of their cistern project.

Campo roads are often not straight nor smooth. Eventually we arrived through the trees & fields to a small community. A very unique community in fact because the main street divides it between the 2 municipalities of San Miguel de Allende & Dolores Hidalgo. 

The members of these communities have been attending community meetings for many years & their participation & motivation has had many positive results.

Two communities have worked together on this project:

El Ocote participants working co-operatively  in 1 group of 7 families, constructed 7 cisterns.

Lomas de Cocina worked 3 groups, 2 of six families & one of 5 families to construct a total of 17 cisterns co-operatively.

They all worked together for 1 wk to train during the pilot then in 7 wks had completed a cistern in each home of each of the family groups.

After gathering to give thanks & for a song everyone went to the Cistern for the ribbon cutting. This was followed by spoken heartfelt thanks for the clean water now available. 

With the formalities over everyone moved to the gazebo which was large enough for the over 50 people to sit & the show started;  several songs sung including a great duet, break-dancing from a young teenage boy who learned his moves from YouTube videos, poetry reading, a few short speeches, a play put on by the mothers, & finally presentation of over 20 diplomas to the members of the community who had completed the 3 days of classes on the topic of water. 

A delicious lunch followed; carnitas (pork), lettuce & tomatoes salad & rice with warm tortillas.  Horchata & watermelon juice perfect to wash it all down. 

In attendance - 50+members of the communities of El Ocote & Lomas de Cocina, Araceli & Berna of UCCANG, Ceci, Juanela, Benigno & Abel of CEDESA. Nate & Lee of SMA Rotary Midday.

Report by: Nate Fultz, President Rotary Midday

Rotary Achieves Close to Half Million Dollars investment in Clean Water

5th April 2017
Report By Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday

Rotary San Miguel Midday. in a cooperating partnership with Centro de Desarollo Agropecuario (CEDESA) & the families/communities involved, have built more than 1,000 rainwater catchment cisterns in 54 rural communities within the Independence Aquifer of central Mexico. 

That means 1,000+ families in & around San Miguel now have contamination free water for drinking & cooking for the rest of their lives & the lives of their grandchildren. 

Also achieved as a result of the ongoing investigative efforts of Dr Ortega (of National Autonomous University of Mexico - UNAM), & his findings of the contaminated ground water resulting from depleted Aquifer in San Miguel & the surrounding area. The region's aquifer is contaminated with concentrated excessive levels of arsenic & fluoride (often more than double the levels considered safe to consume, according to the World Health Organization). 

Arsenic & fluoride are not detectable by smell or taste. 1000's of people are unknowingly ingesting toxic water.

Since 2009 San Miguel Midday Rotary  has managed the investment of almost USD$500,000 to help alleviate the problem, & we are just getting started! 

In order to provide clean water to poor rural families, Midday Rotary developed a program whereby Rotary provides the funding & project management to build rainwater catchment cisterns; CEDESA, provides technical expertise, community development skills & training; & labor to construct the cisterns is provided by community members/recipients. 

Rainwater is collected from roofs in a 12,000 liter, ferro-cement tank next to a family home. During the summer rainy season, ample water can be collected & stored to serve a family of seven until the next rainy season. 

Because they are built above ground, the cisterns are easily accessed for maintenance. A three-day education workshop highlighting the importance of water in daily lives, conservation, & maintenance of the cisterns is an integral part of the program.

There is a need for many, many more cisterns; there are at least 10,000 more families in the region whose health & well-being will benefit from replacing contaminated well water with rainwater. 

Rotary, collaborating with CEDESA & the communities themselves, intends to continue to work with international Rotary clubs & The Rotary Foundation (TRF) to provide funding for as long as there is demand for the rainwater collection projects. 

100 more cisterns are scheduled for construction under the current global grant, a partnership with the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise & D5240. The next grant to build an additional 200 cisterns is already being planned. We hope that we can continue to work with D5240 & its clubs will continue to be our international partners.

Midday Rotary’s cistern program reaches well beyond every human’s right to clean water for drinking  & cooking. The thoughtful implementation of this program has proven to be highly effective in organizing communities to collectively analyze their problems & seek solutions. 

Anyone familiar with life in Mexican rural communities, understands that cooperation rarely exists outside the immediate family. And yet more than 1,000 families have managed to work together building cisterns for & with each other. Participation is voluntary. One person from each family commits to 250 hours of meetings, training, & labor. 

Working in teams of six they build one cistern a week for all six families within their group. Personal investment & self-determination are key to the success & sustainability of the program. Communities stay organized by taking advantage of other CEDESA initiatives such as back yard gardening, bee keeping, holistic healing with medicinal plants, & the list goes on.

70% of the cistern program to date has been funded by grants from 23 International Rotary Clubs, 12 Rotary districts & TRF. The remaining 30% has come from strategic alliances with various foundations & the local municipal water board. Significant funding has come from the Lotus Foundation, San Miguel Community Foundation, & the Alberta Canada government. 

It is a great pleasure to see so many different & varied organizations commit to assist this program to support  campesinos as they work to solve their problems & collectively transform into independent & self-sustaining communities.

For more information, please contact Lee Carter, VP of Community Projects: leecarco@gmail.com

San Miguel Midday Rotarians at the 1000^th Cistern Celebration 

Chela Martinez of CEDESA and Lee Carter of Rotary San Miguel Midday

Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at the 1000^th Cistern Celebration

 agua dulce

Rainwater Harvesting in the Independence Aquifer

Lunch at Vivienda de Abajo – 1000^th Cistern Celebration

By Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday

1000+ cisterns achieved!

1,101 Cisterns

54 Communities & Counting!!

NB 1000 cisterns completed - 101 more will be completed this spring...

Water Harvesting Education Program in Los Platanos

Over 30 participants attended the 3-day Water Harvesting Education Program  (February 20-23) in Los Platanos. The participants were from the communities of Los Platanos, Vergel de Guadalupe & San Cayetano in the municipality of San Luis de la Paz in the state of Guanajuato.

This was the first time Rotary Midday of San Miguel de Allende & CEDESA have visited this community; invited by volunteer community organizer Lucha Villafuerte & Father Zesati to help provide solutions to the contaminated water in the Independence Aquifer.

On day one of the program, between singing, dancing & eating, the participants learned how important water is to life & how to avoid contaminating water in the way they use water . Participants were astonished to learn that only 2% of water on Earth is suitable for human consumption & resolved to use it wisely. The ‘grandmothers’ in the group spoke to us about how they used water long ago which caused the group to reflect on the wastefulness of modern-day usage.

Day two was full of dynamic activities focused on how water in these communities became polluted & how this affected health.  The day started with participants creating a mural of their watershed & learning where their water comes from. They discovered there were three types of pollutants; chemical, mineral & biological, some of which they have control over & some they do not.

The promoters showed photos of adults & children with various stages of fluorosis & arsenic poisoning (fluoride & arsenic both contaminate local water supplies), which caused much discussion. A guest from a nearby community shared the problems her own community is experiencing; the tap water is highly contaminated & has caused several cases of cancer, kidney failure, & death. She reported the municipal government denies that the health problems are caused by city water. She is working with a committed group of 8 concerned citizens to help bring awareness of this serious issue. She heard about the work of Rotary and CEDESA & came to seek help and resources.

Day three of the program began with an original song & sketches about why we shouldn’t drink or cook with tap water. CEDESA & Rotary Midday member, Lee Carter, got in on the act with a humorous role play about a community rallying around clean water for their children.  The participants concluded that harvesting rainwater in cisterns was the best solution to their problem. They were enthusiastic about starting cistern building the following week.

At the conclusion of the 3-day prog. the participants agreed the problem of contaminated water is everyone’s problem & they will work together to build cisterns & to spread awareness in their communities.

Eighty-one cisterns are in the process of being built by communities in the San Luis de la Paz area.

Submitted by: Wendy Coulson (Rotary Peace Fellow/Curriculum Developer)

Celebration Salitrillo 10 December 2016

Today the Community of Salitrillo celebrated the completion of its cistern project.

Started in September, Salitrillo built eight cisterns with the pilot cistern being built at the home of Señora Cecilia Luna Rosas.  The project team was comprised of seven women and two men.  

Salitrillo is located west of San Miguel de Allende a short distance from the old road to Guanajuato.

The project begun with the project team attending a three-day training program which consisted of learning about the importance of the project and clean water, how to build a cistern and how to properly maintain the system in the future to ensure continued pure water.  The training program was conducted by a team from CEDESA.  The format of the three-day training program is a recent addition to the project.

The community then went on to jointly construct their cisterns.

Today's program consisted of comments on the project by each of the project team members, Lee Carter (project manager for the Rotary Club of San Miguel de Allende Mid-Day Club) & by Chela Martinez (of CEDESA, the founding partner of these ongoing water projects - CEDESA is a non-profit organization which conducts the training and provides technical support for the project).  

Members of the project team each received a Certificate of Completion from CEDESA and Lee.  Following a beautiful song by those in attendance, the ribbon cutting ceremony was conducted by Chela, Lee and Fred Collins, (President-elect, Rotary Club SMA Mid-day).

Following the official ceremony, a great meal of mole chicken and rice.  Cake was enjoyed by all especially the children.

The communities of Alonso Yanez, Presa Allende, Begoña de Progreso and Boca de la Cañada, were represented, many members of COCIRA joined in for the festivities, along with Mayra & Hilda, CEDESA promotors from Coralejos, 7 San Miguel Midday Rotarians, 2 visitors to SMA & a member of the Rotary Club of Somerville Tennessee.

Submitted by John Wallace (Rotary Club of Somerville Tennessee)

Celebration Charco de Araujo October 29, 2016

Today we celebrated the completion of 14 cisterns & 3 tinacos in the community of Charco de Araujo. 

This community is near San Diego de La Union & is the first community we have worked with this far north for several years. The area of eastern Dolores Hidalgo, San Diego de La Union & San Luis de la Paz has some of the most contaminated water in the Aquifer. It is for this reason that Rotary San Miguel Midday took the decision to expand its geographical service area with this grant for 319 water harvesting cisterns.

The rural grassroots organization, UCCANG, is working as a partner with CEDESA & Rotary in these projects. UCCANG was founded approx. 35 years ago to work to resolve the issue of lack of potable water resources in the northern part of Guanajuato. They are well organized & managed by a board of directors from those communities. UCCANG helps us identify communities that are requesting cisterns & play a critical role in the project in addition to choosing beneficiary families. 

They have the responsibility of inspecting & verifying all cisterns are in 100% working condition before we have our community celebrations. They are also going to make a formal review six months later to follow up on maintenance issues & recommendations for cistern water disinfection. This is critical to the long term success of these projects.

Seven UCCANG communities attended today’s event. The program for the day included testimonials from the beneficiary families describing their experience in self-constructing their cisterns in work groups each consisting of 7 families. All of the communities in attendance performed songs or dances that remembered their cultural traditions. A wonderful meal, including carnitas (!), capped off the day.

In attendance were:

Chela, Ceci, Benigno and Meche from CEDESA, UCCANG directors & members of the local communities.  Nate, Fred, Beatriz, Gary, Wendy (who developed the project’s education program), Lee, & two guests from Rotary Midday, Carla Cadena (a Jovenes Adelante Scholar who is doing social service in helping administer the project), Edgarkis Crisostomo, (a Rotary Foundation Water & Sanitation Cadre volunteer from the Dominican Republic - who conducted extensive interviews with CEDESA representatives) came with us also.

After the event we all went to La Colorada, down the road, to see their progress in their project.

Submitted by: Lee Carter

Boca de la Cañada Inauguration 22 Oct 2016

Today we celebrated the completion of 21 cisterns in Boca de Canada. There were visitors from other COCIRA communities who wanted to share in the celebration: Presa Allende, Begona del Progresso, Salitrillo, Vivienda de Abajo, Corralejo, & Alonso Yanez. Mercedes Paramo & Abel Suartze were in attendance from CEDESA. Beatriz Salcedo, David Bossman, Catalina Rivera, Frank, & Lee Carter attended representing Rotary. All told there were about 70 persons in attendance. Following a program that included stories from the new cistern owners about the construction process; a poetry presentation by one of the community members, & a traditional dance performance by 12 of the beneficiaries, diplomas were awarded to all of those who successfully completed the education program.

The pilot cistern was built at the elementary school. The beneficiaries of the project agreed to teach an abbreviated form of the education program to some of the students of the school & they were awarded diplomas as well.


The community built two “models” of cisterns; the first demontrated a completed & connected cistern next to a home & the second demonstrated a cistern under construction. They also prepared a 4 ft x 8 ft picture board showing the people working in each stage of the cistern construction.

       

As always the program concluded with a delicious meal prepared by the community.

Report by Lee Carter

Eight Cisterns in Eight Weeks | Salitrillo Cistern Project

Wrapping Up   - 22nd Sept 2016

The cistern project in Salitrillo is well and truly underway. The Pilot cistern at the home of Señora Cecilia Luna Rosas is finished except for a curing period to set the concrete. 

Meanwhile the second cistern of eight which make up the first phase of the Salitrillo project is just about ready for its “gorro” or roof. At this point, the build team of seven women and two men are on their own except for weekly visits from Señor Abel, the technical advisor from CEDESA.

This year the Rotary San Miguel Midday Club working with the Rotary Action Group for Water and Sanitation (WASRAG) introduced an innovation in the cistern construction process: plastic wrap! 

As with any ferro-cement structure, cement must be allowed to cure slowly to prevent cracking and to attain its maximum structural strength. Normally ferro-cement structures are “watered”, sprayed down with water on a daily basis, for a period of days or weeks to make sure that the cement sets up slowly and remains crack-free. 

Needless to say this involves both careful attention to the watering schedule and the use of water which is then wasted. 

Hence, the use of plastic wrap. By wrapping the entire structure in a double layer of industrial sized plastic wrap (think kitchen plastic wrap on a grand scale), the cisterns wall and roof can undergo a slow curing period with much less care and feeding, and with virtually no wasted water.

Though it may seem modest, it’s important to place Salitrillo’s cistern project in perspective. The eight Salitrillo cisterns are among a total of 819 cisterns constructed since 2008. Each cistern collects 12,000 liters of rainwater when full. If you do the math, CEDESA and COCIRA, Project Beneficiaries and Rotary San Miguel Midday have created an amazing above ground reservoir capable of holding a whopping 9,828,000 liters of potable water storage. 

Think about that for a minute. 10 million liters is approximately 3 million gallons or roughly four Olympic sized swimming pools of water captured each year for the drinking and cooking needs of people living within the area of the Independencia aquifer.

When the current Global Grant is completed in the spring of 2017, a total of 1,092 cisterns will have been built representing an investment of over $10,000,000 pesos ($550,000 USD). Total rainwater collection capacity will top 13 million liters. And the geographic area serviced by the combined Rotary projects will include the communities surrounding San Miguel de Allende, San Diego de la Union, Dolores Hidalgo and San Luis de la Paz.

Guest post by Roger Brudno.

Ready for a Top Hat: Salitrillo Cistern Project

Day Three - 16th September 2016

It’s been two days since my last visit and I can’t believe the progress the build team has made. Not only has the concrete base of the cistern been set, but the walls of the cistern are up, and the metal work for the “gorro” or cap is laid out on the ground.

At this stage, you can see just how massive the finished cistern will be. Four workers are busy inside the cylinder applying the next-to-last coat of concrete. 

Cement is applied first in one direction (horizontal), then after a short period for layer-one cement to set up, a second layer is overlaid in the opposite direction (vertical). 

The bidirectional application makes for tough and water-tight walls. I am amazed to learn that, when full, the walls flex. Okay, the walls don’t actually bulge, but the ferro-cement expands dynamically under the weight of the water.

The “masa” or concrete mud for the gorro is mixed at a ratio of four parts cement to one-part sand, and significantly stiffer than the walls because the wet mix is applied directly to the metal mesh without the aid of plywood backing.

The gorro is equipped with an access door to permit maintenance on the interior of the cistern. 

And the exterior of the cistern is fitted with a clever, but commonsense water level gauge. A clear plastic hose will be connected between the water spigot at the bottom of the cistern and a narrow diameter pipe protruding from the top of the cistern. As the interior water level is drawn down, there is a corresponding drop in the water level in the transparent hose.

Recommended cistern maintenance consists of two primary elements: 1) yearly brushing of interior walls, and 2) if the catchment roof surface is of any material other than concrete or tin, then it must be repainted annually. 

Next stop, the final finish work.

Guest post by Roger Brudno.

Launched! Salitrillo Cistern Project

Day One - 13th September 2016

When Lee Carter and I arrive, the Salitrillo cistern build team had already laid out a base layer of chicken wire. As a first-time visitor to a cistern pilot, I’m excited to learn the basics of ferro-cement cistern construction.

Once completed, the cistern will hold 12,000 liters, harvesting enough water during one rainy season to serve all of the potable water needs, both drinking and cooking, for a family of 6-8 for a year.

It turns out that the metal structural elements of the cistern walls form a kind of layer cake—a layer of chicken wire folded over a layer of heavy-gauge iron mesh, then covered with a second layer of chicken wire all woven neatly together. Or rather, a layer cake that rolls up into a cylinder to create the walls of the cistern which are then set on a concrete base and lined with a temporary barrier of bendy plywood designed to support the application of an exterior coat of concrete until it dries.

Members of the community are hard at work weaving the chicken wire together under the watchful eye of Señor Abel, a technical expert from CEDESA in charge of teaching community members the basics of cistern construction. 

What stands out for me right away is the ratio of women to men in the work group: most of the team consists of women. And it’s obvious, that the team is already a well-oiled machine. Tasks are carried out with little discussion and a light-hearted atmosphere prevails.

This Salitrillo Pilot is cistern number 48 out of 319 cisterns funded by the Rotary Club’s recent Global Grant (GG1524911) and implemented in collaboration with CEDESA and COCIRA. 

It’s the first cistern for this little community of just 52 families. A total of eight cisterns are planned for Salitrillo. Once the core group is trained, they will cooperate to assist their neighbors with subsequent cisterns. Señor Abel from CEDESA will then make weekly visits to monitor progress and ensure quality-control.

Guest post by Roger Brudno.

Nombre de Dios Cistern Project Completion Celebration – August 13, 2016

Approximately 50 people - friends & neighbors - came together today to celebrate the completion of the last of five cisterns. 

The night was full of rain & the road there was sometimes good & sometimes a muddy slip-sliding mess, but a 90 minute drive got us there. The day was overcast with a breeze & chairs were set up in a large circle under a large Mesquite tree. The view to the west to get to Guanajuato was beautiful. Everything green from recent rains. The cisterns already had 2 feet of water.

After thanks to the people coming, CEDESA, COCIRA, & Rotary Club Midday, the people all held hands & gave (one at a time) thanks. Some took longer but you were allowed to pass the “prayer” to the next person. 

The nice thing about travelling is seeing how people are the same but different. This prayer circle was a perfect example. They all held hands left under and right over. After “prayer” we all went to three cisterns close by & had ribbon cutting with the owners. 

One elderly woman, instead of materials for a cistern, received a tinaco (large plastic container) because she would not be able to do the work of building a cistern. 

Lunch was a potluck type where all families come together with rice, tortilla, mole, beans, macaroni & ham, beef, horchata (a rice drink with cinnamon), & pineapple water.

Lee Carter, Nate Fultz, Beatriz Salcedo from Rotary attended as did Carla Cadena, intern/administrator of GG1524911.

Guest Report by Nate Fultz, President Midday Rotary Club SMA

Project Update July 23, 2016

The project (1624911) has been moving along at break neck speed!

We have now presented the education program 3 times: Boca de la Cañada, Charco de Araujo, La Colorada. 

This week I went with Ceci (CEDESA) to observe the final day of the program in La Colorada. Universally the beneficiaries are finding the program both helpful & also very fun. A number of people told me that they thought spending three days in water education was going to be boring & too much time. However, after experiencing the program, they are all very excited & relate that they understand much better now the water problems of the region & why the cisterns are so important. 

We are administering a Pre-education questionnaire & a Post-education questionnaire so that we can measure the success of the education program. I look forward to reporting those results at a later date.

We have cisterns under construction in Charco de Araujo (14 cisterns & 3 tinacos), La Colorada (24), & Boca de la Cañada (21) now. 

We have used all of the special caliber chicken wire from our vendor, Hierro Comercial, & are now waiting for it to be re-stocked. It is a special factory order & will take from four to six weeks to be restocked. This is OK as we are at a point that we need to review our progress to date & take care of many details. 

We hope to have the final version of the Water Education Manual finished & ready to go to the printer late next week. We are moving forward on the second draft of the Cistern Construction & Maintenance Manual next week. 

We still have not found a suitable truck for CEDESA & without it, getting CEDESA promotors & technicians to the project sites has been a challenge. With this respite in construction, I hope we can get these important details completed in the next few weeks. 

Next Thursday we will have a planning meeting at CEDESA to reschedule the project details & resolve questions about the next phases of the project.

Lee Carter - Rotary San Miguel Midday

Charco de Araujo, San Diego de la Union June 21 to June 23, 2016

After many meetings & lots of hard work on the part of CEDESA, COCIRA, UCCANG & Rotary under the guiding hands of Wendy Coulson; our expert in curriculum & adult teaching methods, the first five modules of the education program were presented in Charco de Araujo. 

The program is very hands-on & participatory so it is much more than just a presentation.

There was much enthusiasm among the participants with several persons proclaiming that EVERY person in the community should have an opportunity to learn all of this!

Overall, we are very pleased. We are now teaching at Boca de la Cañada in San Miguel & next week Wendy & I will meet to review & talk about revisions to the curriculum & also the manual which is in its "almost final draft" form. 

I will let the photos tell the story. Enjoy - Lee

A Day at CEDESA

May 19, 2016

Yesterday, after going to Nombre de Dios with Chela and Abel, we returned to CEDESA for additional planning of our new global grant (GG1524911) for 319 more water harvesting cisterns in San Miguel, Dolores Hidalgo, San Diego de la Union & San Luis de la Paz. 

Present were Chela, Abel, Meche, Benigno, and Ceci.

We reviewed first the progress on the new education program & the principal objectives of that program. Meche has been working hard with Wendy Coulson to develop the program & didactic materials to go with that. We all agreed that in a nutshell our goals are to have people fully understand

1.       the reason for cisterns is lack of an improved water source or having water that is terribly contaminated with fluoride and arsenic.

2.      the cistern water is free from those poisons & they should never drink water from wells.

3.        they can improve their water & health even more by integrating disinfection steps to improve the cistern water & avoid any potential biological contamination &

4.       have people learn how to self-construct their water harvesting system & maintain it to get maximum benefit from it.

Those are our primary objectives for this project &grant. However we also will be using this opportunity to continue to develop the communities' capacity to work together to analyze their problems & seek solutions (resources). 

We'd like to build on this opportunity so that they can take advantage of other opportunities such as backyard gardens, natural medicine, beekeeping, & other eco-technologies such as gray water filtering & the eco-cina stoves. We'd like the cistern projects to continue to be the first step in the long process of community empowerment.

The education program is ready now to “beta test” in the first communities. We are going to start in Boca de la Cañada (San Miguel) in two weeks & then in Las Claveles (Dolores) after that. 

We will present the didactic materials in the “final draft” format & then make adjustments before going to press & printing enough materials to carry us through the project.

Everyone in the communities are enthusiastic & champing at the bit to get started. They all want to work through the summer rainy season in order to be able to harvest at least a little rain before the dry weather returns in the fall. 

CEDESA is going to work up a draft schedule next week so we can plan out each mini-project. They are talking about doing as many as four different communities per month. Yikes, that is going to be a lot of work for all of us!

As we worked through potential pitfalls & bottlenecks in this ambitious program, we realized that we would need another technician in addition to Benigno & Abel to be able to do the site visits in each community during the construction process. 

A great solution was devised that will also allow us to continue to develop our youth program in the process. We will select a young person in each community where we are working to become an expert in construction & maintenance of the systems. This person will do the project monitoring throughout the construction process & will be report & consult with Abel &/or Benigno as the mini-project proceeds. Instead of having a once a week visit from the technician, we will have someone there overseeing the construction on a daily basis as each group builds cisterns at each home. 

Once the project is complete we will be leaving behind “a community expert” who can continue to monitor cisterns & even assist in repairs as needed. We already have a budget for an albanil for the pilot week. Since each group is now obligated to provide an albanil throughout the mini-project including the pilot cistern week, those funds can be used as a stipend for developing our new community expert. CEDESA will be responsible for handling the payment process.

We also reviewed the financial resources available in the grant so that we could come up with a simplified billing plan. When we combine our organization budget with our education teaching budget, we have 2,400 pesos for Pre-Pilot expenses. For the Pilot stage of the project we have $4,750 in funds available. And for post-project monitoring & evaluation we have 900 pesos available. 

We budgeted for 11 mini-projects as we were developing the project but as the number of cisterns grew the number of mini-projects is likely to be 15 to 18 … thank heavens for our contingency budget!

CEDESA is to be responsible for tracking certain costs/expenses each month & reporting them to Rotary for reimbursement. They need to record all KM driven in CEDESA vehicles in executing the projects to be reimbursed @ 3.5 pesos / KM. They also need to keep all tickets from using public transportation so that can be reimbursed as well up to a total of $9000 for the project. We will also be providing an $800 peso phone allowance per month to be split up between the various promotors & technicians.

Equipment: We need to get the new vehicle as soon as possible. Rotary has $5,000 dollars to contribute to that. CEDESA has 30,000 pesos set aside as well. We are going to purchase one “very good” vehicle that will last many years into the future for project monitoring. We are going to invest about 10,000 pesos of that money in upgrading an existing vehicle. Even with two new vehicles in play, transportation will still be a headache for CEDESA. 

The electrode in the fluoride testing laboratory has failed & we are looking into replacing that. Initial quotations that Meche got are expensive … about US$1,500. We had not counted on needing this within the time frame of this grant. We will probably reduce our “tools” budget to get this back on-line &I will try to see if we can find outside resources to help cover this unexpected expense.

We are working to be able to get the communities on the edges of San Diego de la Union & San Luis de la Paz involved in this grant. To do so, the two “subgroups” will have to work under UCCANG. 

UCCANG is responsible for carrying out several functions … community selection, receiving solicitudes & for providing monitoring and evaluation for six months after the construction phase. Integrating them into UCCANG does not seem to be a problem. The two subgroups are SECOPA (Servicios Comunitarios de Pozos Ademada – San Diego Union) and CUVA (Comunidades Unidas Para La Vida y Agua – San Jose Iturbide).

Recently a well in the San Jose Iturbide area, in the community of La Cantera, was discovered to have radioactivity in the water. There has been a high rate of documented child leukemia in that town as well. Dr. Ortega of UNAM is studying the problem to determine if this is an isolated instance of industrial contamination or if it is going to be as a result of the ever-challenging problems we are facing in the aquifer. There are 120 affected families & the government is, of course, denying that there is a problem.

Submitted by: Lee Carter