Water in BCS's Eastern Cape
Citizens from the 4 East Cape watersheds visit water harvest study site at Rancho Cacachilas in the Los Planes watershed.
Across Mexico’s deserts water is scarce and precious for human communities and for the ecological processes that sustain life. In our corner of this region, the southern Baja Peninsula, this is particularly true, as our population is growing faster than any other in Mexico. Even with recent tropical storms and Hurricane Olaf, it is uncertain if the rains will be enough to break the deep drought we've had for 18 months in Baja California Sur state. Everywhere LegacyWorks has worked for the past five years - Santiago, Los Barriles, Cabo Pulmo, La Ventana, Boca del Alamo - water concerns are paramount. Over and over, community leaders have requested help understanding the state and trajectory of their water resources as a point of departure for better managing them.
The Citizens’ Water Report: Three years ago we began a collaboration with the Baja Coastal Institute (BCI) to survey water issues to inform citizen action, improve policy, and prepare youth leaders through the public schools. Ing. Fernando Frias, technical director for the BCS Consejo de Cuencas and Dr. Arturo Cruz Falcón, a noted regional water researcher affiliated with the prestigious research center CIBNOR, became our lead investigators. LegacyWorks’ Pablo Castro joined the team to coordinate research and lead the arduous task of distilling masses of information. Deb Zeyen and Paulina Godoy of BCI sharpened the technical analysis and crafted remarkably clear and compelling communications that simplified the dense technical information.
The result is our recently-released East Cape Citizens’ Water Report. The report answers key questions: How much water do we use and for what purposes? What is the quality of our water? What will water demand be like in the future? What tools do we have to meet that need?
The report demonstrates that:
The region is rapidly arriving at a breaking point with deficits between water rights assigned and the scarce rainwater that recharges our aquifers.
Regional growth projections are alarming. The most conservative estimates identify a 46 percent water deficit in 20 years between water use and annual rainwater recharge.
Water quality is not monitored widely or consistently, something that hardly worked for a small population but will definitely not serve the 200,000 new inhabitants that are projected to live in the region in the next 20 years.
We still have time, if we act now, to explore diverse options to design a water management system that fits within ecosystem limits using a combination of tools: dams, atmospheric water generation, desalination, increased natural recharge, efficiency and micro and macro metering.
Within months of issuing and presenting the Report, citizen groups have begun forming and working together in La Ventana and Los Planes, Los Barriles, and Cabo Pulmo to study the issue further and collaboratively explore solutions. We are extremely proud to have contributed to the environmental curricula designed by Baja Coastal Institute - including our Water Study for Cabo del Este schools - recently instituted in the state’s public education system.
We know that water can divide communities, cripple economies and leave the poorest with the least access to this essential resource. LegacyWorks envisions a different outcome, one that works with good information, action-learning, and collaborative, inclusive processes to achieve a more promising and resilient future.