MEXICO.- Something started to go wrong at Adja Arévalo’s house. At first the water was missing at night, then from 3: 30 in the afternoon , as soon as the families finished washing the dishes. But in the last days the liquid falls when she wants. Or when the authorities of Nuevo León want. And it is murky, as if it had passed through a quagmire.
That is why he was furious when he heard that the state government and the city of Monterrey would charge more as a measure to reduce water consumption in the face of the shortage crisis that could be seen coming, one of the worst in its entire history as an entity mounted in all its splendor on a semi-desert.
“We are running out of water”, Adja tweeted to relieve her frustration a bit. “I don’t know whether to wash my clothes or not”.
This woman’s cry like that of many other people on social networks later materialized in protests. In recent days, they consider that the clamp is closed against the population in general due to tariffs, ecological quotas plus a staggered rise for consumption, starting in April. While the industry continues to consume without many effects.
The drought of the dams due to the extraction of water and the lack of rain, excess consumption and the lack of solutions for decades has put part of the people from Monterrey against what feeds them: the industry, the economic base of the entity, the protagonist of its development, the second after CDMX.
“It is not a drought , it is looting”, protesters took to the streets grouped in 16 collectives of non-conformists.
According to information from these groups, there are five soft drink bottling companies that concentrate water extraction in the entity: Beverages Arca, Beverages Worlds, Casa Guajardo, Compañía Topo Chico and Grupo Embotellador Noreste.
“These consortiums extract from the subsoil four million 783 thousand 256 million cubic meters per year, four times more than authorized by the National Commission Water (Conagua) for domestic use throughout the entity, which represents one million 33 thousand 950 cubic meters per year”, they warned in a statement.
In addition, the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, Alfa Subsidiaries, Industria del Álcali, Hylsa and Ternium Mexico obtains more than one million cubic meters per years, and up to two million in individual titles. With their seven concessions, they can use ten million 506, 256 cubic meters of groundwater.
The director of the Pronatura Noreste organization, Rosario Álvarez, believes that the amount used by the industry could be higher because the National Water Council, in charge of regulating the concessions, is not transparent. “It is not known how much water is supplied or how many records there are and only calculations can be made,” he observes.
The director of Monterrey Water and Drainage Services, Juan Ignacio Barragán Villarreal, promised that the measure would not affect half of the users (if they do not consume more) and that the rates will cover the costs of removing contaminants deposited in the wastewater.
He also said that the rate of increase would be 000% for the population and 25% for commerce and industry. However, many believe that it is abusive against the most unprotected because the state government announced sanctions against people who make improper use of water.
But it was not said whether equivalent measures would be applied to segments against industrialists that abuse the liquid.
The counterparty
The stores where they sell containers to store water in Monterrey, the state capital, are saturated daily with desperate people in long lines to buy water tanks, drums, boats and buckets to store the water when it comes home. Generally in the wealthiest areas; in the most marginalized, it is distributed in pipes that are not enough.
The problem has forced a part of the industry to respond to the accusationss. Rodrigo Fernández, president of Caintra, the business organization that represents the industrialists of Nuevo León, said that it is not true that they consume as much water as is claimed.
“We have addressed the issue. We control their consumption, reuse of water, we installed treatment plants, among other things, and we are going to train and advise companies of all sizes and sectors to continue with the improvement”.
With the industry in sight and without water, the state is between a rock and a hard place. New Lion. At the national level, the second best position in the reception of Foreign Direct Investment, mainly from the United States and Asia for more than 3,000 millions of dollars annually.
Environmentalists such as Jorge Moreno, from the Autonomous University of Monterrey agree in which the problem is more complex than just the extraction of water by the industry.
“It also depends on better storage and distribution; of the organization and reduction of waste by users and of the control of urban growth that has subtracted green spaces”.
Although the reduction of water in the dams has been an alert for a long time for the authorities, the truth is that they have never been so low: Cerro Prieto at 9%, La Boca with a 25.28% and The Knife with 53.56%.
In a moment of desperation, deputy Héctor García presented a rogatory in Congress to resume the controversial Monterrey VI project. For about a decade, the construction of an aqueduct of 372 kilometers from the state of San Luis Potosí to Nuevo León was debated.
“This would guarantee the water for more than 50 years”, recalled the legislator. The governor of SLP, Ricardo Gallardo, shouted to the heavens. “They are not going to take it.”
Meanwhile, Samuel García, president of Nuevo León, replied that they would also seek to bring it from Veracruz, where they are constantly flooded due to so much rain and lack of drainage. but they did not echo there either and they passed the ball to the Federal government. “It is Conagua that must authorize it,” declared Cuitláhuac García.
“President Andrés Manuel López Obrador must authorize it .
Between dime and direte and still without a solution, the population continues with little water and some groups have proposed bombing the clouds as an emergency measure, as has already been done to put out fires. But it would only be a palliative.
The disease is still there.
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