The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) awarded $200,000 to Canadian and Mexican Organizations to work on increasing water resilience through Rainwater Harvesting (RWH). The project, called One Water, will foster collaboration between Nipissing First Nation and three Indigenous communities in Mexico Wixárika- Jalisco, Mazateca-Oaxaca and Rarámuri-Chihuahuan). The project team also includes Isla Urbana, Canadian Shield Consultants and University of Toronto’s Center for Global Engineering.
Why Rainwater?
For Isla Urbana and many indigenous communities in Mexico and Mexican citizens, rainwater harvesting make sense:
- More than 10 million Mexican citizens are without access to water services. In Mexico City alone, at least 250,000 people live without connection to the water network and millions more have an intermittent service or receive contaminated water. A rainwater harvesting system can capture a large quantity of water and supply a family with water for 5 to 12 months per year. With good design, the water can be used for all household uses, even to drink.
- Every time Mexico City experience heavy rainfall, the drainage systems are inundated with enormous amounts of rainwater. By harvesting rain, cisterns would be filled with clean water instead of contaminating and saturating the drainage system.
- In Mexico City, 70% of water that us used come from aquafers directly underneath the city. The extraction of this water has been so extreme that the city has sunk more than 10 m (32 feet) in the last 100 years.
- Mexico City is ranked third on the list of major world cities facing extreme water stress. This is because Mexico City extracts more water from the aquafers and rivers than is naturally recharged. If this trend is maintained, these sources will cease to exist in the not-too-distant future. Therefore, if the city’s roof and building capture rainwater instead of letting it drain, it could extract less water form the aquafers during the rainy season and give the aquifers time to naturally recharge. There is a need to balance water sources to ensure that the aquifer can give water during the dry season.
- 30% of the water supplied to Mexico City’s network comes from the Lerma-Cutzamala system. This water is pumped from 150 KM (93 miles) away and vertically over mountains for 1 KM (0.6 miles) from sources outside of the Valley of Mexico. The energy required to pump all this water is equivalent to the total electricity consumption of the city of Puebla, which contains over 1.5 million inhabitants!
Isla Urbana, a not-for-profit in Mexico, is working to promote the uptake of rainwater harvesting while learning how to do it in the most effective way possible. The seek to develop to the points where rainwater harvesting is incorporated effectively into Mexico City’s water infrastructure.
In Canada, indigenous communities have struggled with access to safe drinking water for decades. For many communities’ infrastructure deficits, pollution in water sources and lack of trained personnel are some of the causes. First Nation communities issue Drinking Water Advisories (DWAs) to warn people to not drink water that may be unsafe. As of October 2022, there were 22 long-term (lasting one year or longer) DWAs and 13 short-term (under one year) DWAs in Ontario, the largest number of all the provinces. Multiple long-term DWAs have been lifted since 2015 thanks to investment in infrastructure but the lack of resilience in water infrastructure and the risk of contamination led to new DWAs and recurrent short-term DWAs every year. Climate change is expected to aggravate the situation, as warmer temperatures alter water cycles, and create favorable conditions for additional threats such as blue-green algae and infrastructure failures (e.g. power outages) associated with extreme weather events.
The One Water Framework
The goals of the One Water project are to:
Increase water availability and water infrastructure resilience for First Nation Communities in Ontario through Rainwater Harvesting (RWH).
2. Build local community capacity around RWH
3. Increase RWH adoption among First Nations communities in Ontario; and
4. Strengthen ties among international and interdisciplinary communities around water resilience strategies across North America.
Project Progression
-Successful creation of Water Resilience Hub and on-going monthly meetings – A group of approximately 15 people from Isla Urbana, Nipissing First Nation (NFN), University of Toronto and Canadian Shield Consultants have met the first Tuesday of reach month since April 2024 to work on this project.
-Community participation and positive response: NFN’s Chief and Council formally approved the Environment Departments participation on the project in August 2023. Since then, 2 project surveys have been administered to gather input on the project. A kick-off survey was responded by 47 people (August - October 2023) and a survey to inform the site selection and design of rainwater harvesting system was responded by 173 people (Dec 2023 – Jan 2024). On November 18th, 2023, the NFN’s Environment Manager, Curtis Avery, gave a presentation to community members at NFNs Annual General Meeting about the NFN delegation to Mexico, a project overview and progress to hundreds of NFN band members. In addition, two design charettes occurred (February 6 and 28) involving UofT Center for Global Engineering (CGEN) and NFN community members and staff also occurred, investigating the applications of RWH system design and application in real world scenarios within Nipissing First Nation.
- Intercultural exchange and community visioning in Mexico: A group of 30 people (staff, project partners and members from the 4 Indigenous communities involved in the project) participated in an intercultural and knowledge exchange around water solutions from August 28th to Sept 5th, 2023. The group spent 3 days in Mexico City visiting culturally and ecologically significant places such as the Chinampas, el Zocalo and Chapultepec Spring. The following 4 days of the program took place in Oaxaca where they visited remote rainwater harvesting systems in the community of Yaxe, the Ethnobotanical Garden and the forest management system of Ixtlan de Juarez, one of the best in Mexico. Every night there were presentations by each community on the following questions:
- What is your relationship with water? How has your relationship with water changed from childhood to now? What is the role of water in your community, culture and worldview? What does rain mean to you?
- Partnership with University of Toronto: UofT designated One Water as one of the projects eligible for the capstone course of their engineering programs. Since they joined One Water in October 2023, they have participated in the monthly Water Resilience Hub meetings and contributed to the different project phases. They also visited NFN and assisted with the presentation at their Annual General Meeting. Because of this talented group, a technical document now exists for those looking to establish a rainwater harvesting system, providing guidance and technical information required for making sound decisions of system implementation.
- Communications and public relations: The project was showcased in local new media outlets. The NFN Environmental Department also showcased the project in two of the monthly community newsletters. The Canadian Embassy in Mexico posted about the intercultural exchange that took place in August 2023. An Instagram project account has been created in addition to a 10 min video. These links are listed below.
https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/nipissing-first-nation-joins-water-resilience-project-7531440
The project will be running into 2024/2025 fiscal year with much planned! A delegation of Mexican indigenous communities is expected to arrive in time for the 2024 Annual NFN Powwow to experience our cultural gathering, relationship with water and to experience our traditional territory for the first time. For more information, please contact Environment Manager, Curtis Avery at:
Phone: (705) 753-2050 ext. 1290
Cell: (705) 845-1111
Email: [email protected]
