Valsequillo

I normally don’t talk that much about work-related stuff, but here is an update on one of our projects. We are working on a joint development project for a region of the municipality of Puebla called Valsequillo (named for the large reservoir). The Valsequillo Reservoir is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in Mexico. The area surrounding the lake has a tremendous amount of development pressure, as well as some of the most marginalized population of the municipality of Puebla.

Right now we have a fair amount of money from SEMARNAT to apply towards a sustainable development plan for the region. We are working together with the state and municipal government on the project and just met in Mexico City last Wednesday to hear the presentations of prospective consultants. There is rule with federal money in Mexico that dictates that we cannot directly pay a private consultant or university for work. There are two options, the first being to jointly contract a public university and a private consultant, with the public university receiving at least 51% of the funds. The second option, and not the best, is to simply pay a public university for their signature, but for this, they often charge 35% of the total just for filtering the funds. So we ended up contracting a pubic university and 2 international consultants, one from Spain and one from England. The Spanish firm has done a lot of sustainable development from working with the city of Casablanca to doing community based art projects in a small village in Africa. The British company was actually behind the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube, but also has more environmentally focused projects, like the soon-to-be completed (2010) 1^st carbon neutral city in the world, located in Shanghai China.

So what we’re working on is a series of plans. We have to have a thing called a Partial Program of Sustainable Urban Development to modify the existing land use zoning for the area. The second part is the work leading up to the declaration of a new natural protected area in the south of the municipality. The third will be the creation of a series of sustainable development and ecotourism projects (to be enacted once additional funding is secured). And finally, we are starting on the plans for an example “eco-village” that will demonstrate the use of alternative energy sources, energy and water conservation, green building design, mixed use planning, and many other things. So that is basically the project to date. Last Sunday we went out to the area to get to know the region better and try to find locations for some projects. The following are a series of photos from the Valsequillo Region.

The Valsequillo Reservior

Slight problem with invasive aquatic plant (Eichhornia crassipes or Water Hyacinth)

and with trash

Squash drying on a roof-top

Sunday was also palm Sunday so people were returning from church with their palm weavings (actually a significant threat to the surrounding forests where they are harvested in mass quantities every year for palm sunday)

Many of the streets in the various towns were still covered with remnant flowers from the morning's processions