Cleaning the waters of Lake Atitlán.
Restoring life, the way it’s meant to be.
Lake Atitlán is considered to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. This breathtaking crater lake is surrounded by 3 volcanoes, home to a dozen Mayan communities, multiple native languages, vibrant textile designs, ancient stories, and incredible diversity of birds and trees.
But the lake is dying.
Since 2009, Lake Atitlán has been considered a contaminated water source.
The lake ecosystem is in a downward spiral.
With the lack of proper wastewater management infrastructure, untreated grey and blackwater from every village funnels through pipes that feed directly into the lake. As population and tourism continues to rise, this problem is only getting worse.
The lake also suffers from toxic runoff from pesticides and fertilizers used on surrounding farms. The excess of nutrients causes an explosion of cyanobacteria and algae blooms.
The once healthy and lively lake is now devoid of fish and other lake critters. Many people report getting sick after swimming in the lake, and it’s now a contaminated source of drinking water for many local families.
The lake deserves our love.
The lake has provided beauty, inspiration, and livelihoods for so many people, and it’s time we give back. Enter Atitlán Water Protectors, a group of people dedicated to restoring the ecological vitality of the lake and increasing the well-being of its inhabitants.
OUR MISSION
We’re developing nature-based, localized solutions to minimize runoff and clean the water going into the lake. The goal is to create an impactful, low-cost, scalable model that can be adopted by towns around the lake so together, we can clean it and restore life the way it should be.
Our Approach
Our entire approach is centered around a core permaculture principle: slow down water and store it on the landscape.
We can do this through a variety of techniques like creating ponds, terraces, grey and blackwater leech fields, swales, contoured reforestation.
By combining these techniques, we are not only filtering and cleaning the water in this ancestral watershed, we are increasing bio diversity, food sovereignty and resilience in our community.
Our dream is to create many productive, water-cleaning landscapes on local people's land, and to provide a model of land management that can be replicated throughout this ancestral watershed.
Tzununa Pilot Project
Tzununa is a village with the most year-round rivers and waterfalls of any town on the lake and is the perfect spot to pilot our efforts. We’ll be testing our theories and refining the best approach here before bringing it to other lake communities. We’re in need of $25k to complete phase 1 of the pilot.
Large, centralized systems are not the answer.
The government is currently proposing to build a large pipeline around the lake to pump wastewater to the coast. We see major issues with this approach, including:
Huge use of financial resources and slow timeline to execute
Will require ongoing maintenance by limited team of experts
Any issue with the system will significantly impact the entire system
Pumping water out of a watershed is a huge loss of a valuable resource and could have serious detrimental effects on the ecosystem
Together we can create an upward spiral towards regeneration and restoration.
Thank you so much for your generosity and for supporting life.
Key Partners
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Water 4 Life Global
The Water 4 Life Global team will lead on fundraising, donor management, and marketing material to showcase the project. They will also assist with groundwork and data collection and organization.
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WellKind
WellKind Guatemala will focus on raising community awareness of the program and supporting with organization and education. They will also assist with logistics and manage incoming funding and expense allocations.
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Regenera
The Regenera team will spearhead the implementation of the well-designed and multi-phase projects. They will also manage the groundwork and data analysis.