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The purpose of this project is to rejuvenate the Taco River Watershed. The Taco River supplies water to the municipality of Chiquimula, Guatemala. The emphasis of this project includes water and sanitation, health, hunger, education, and community management improvements for the inhabitants of the communities in the watershed as well as significant improvements to the watershed. The project proposal was accepted as a 3-H Grant project, but as the 3-H application was being prepared, 3-H Grants were cancelled this spring. The project is the result of 3 plus years of community and watershed assessment and sub-project planning and development. The assessments, planning and sub-project development were mainly carried out by the staff and students of the Chiquimula branch of San Carlos University (Guatemala National University) with help of the Chiquimula and Fort Collins, CO Rotary Clubs. Eighteen separate sub-projects were originally outlined to meet the community’s needs and watershed improvement goals. Ten of the most important are included in this rejuvenation project.
There are six small communities in the watershed amounting to around 2000 inhabitants, but their use of the land in the watershed is having a negative effect on the water supply of 80,000 citizens in the Chiquimula, Guatemala municipality. The current state of the communities is:
(1)None of the six communities has an adequate water supply;
(2)Each community has a community development committee, COCODE, but none have been trained;
(3)The education of the children in the communities is inadequate;
(4)The health care in the communities is inadequate;
(5)The food supply in the communities is extremely variable but generally poor due to lack of income and poor farming practices;
(6)There is little control of the tree cutting (deforestation) for fire wood used for cooking and the cooking practices have a negative effect on the inhabitant’s health.
Until the inhabitants of the communities see improvements in these six aspects of their lives, they can not be expected to make significant changes in land use that will be needed to improve the water holding capacity of the watershed. This project will make improvements in all six areas.
The methods used in developing and carrying out this project can easily be used to help rejuvenate other watersheds. All watersheds in Guatemala are under great pressures. | 
