2024-04-18 09:21:46
In the midst of a water crisis in much of the country, with lagos y dry dams o going backthe Chamber of Deputies He served 12 years without issuing the General Water Laweven despite the mandate of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to issue it.
In Saint Lazarus, cinco Legislatures They have had the opportunity to issue it, and despite forums, meetings, discussions and initiatives, nothing has prospered in more than a decade; while the location of the Cut The issuing of the law occurred in 2022, a decade after its issuance was ordered when the Mexican Constitution on the human right to water was reformed.
Nor the severe hydrological crisis that Monterrey in 2022, the worst in its history, nor the imperious call in 2017 from the Water Advisory Council to issue the law or the constitutional controversies presented in the SCJN, which claimed Congress’s inattention in this matter, made the deputies of five Legislatures will fill them with a sense of urgency to agree on the new regulations.
According to the SCJN, the congressmen incur in “absolute legislative omission in mandatory exercise powers,” by not having issued the General Water Law.
The size of the challenge is put into context by the study “Water Perspectives in Mexico. Proposals towards water security”, prepared by the UNAM Water Network, the Center Regional de Water Security, UNESCO and the Agua Capital organization, which establishes that, according to official data, on a national scale only 58% of the population has daily water at home and has basic sanitation.
According to the study, six million people lack access to drinking water and 11 million to sanitation; only 14% of the population receives water 24 hours a day; Only 50% of the volume collected in sewage receives some type of treatment and 60% of water bodies present some degree of contamination.
Besides 653 aquifers in national territory, 157 are overexploited; 40% of water is lost in leaks in municipal distribution systems, while in agriculture the loss reaches up to 50%; while 71% of the country has high or very high water pressure.
Analysis
For Maria Eugenia Ochoamember of the Social Water Assembly collective, which in turn is part of the National Coordinator Water for All, Water for Life, the legislative omission for the General Water Law has only one explanation: the pressure from the companies that exploit water has not been overcome.
He emphasized that the review of concessions for water exploitation is urgent, since since the current law was enacted in 1992, these have gone from two thousand to more than 500 thousand.
And to this, he continued, is added that 7% of the dealers concentrate 70% of the availability of water in the country.
“Not satisfied with that, they have created a market in which if a bottler, a soft drink company, a mining company or textile “He no longer wants to have the concession, he sells it to the highest bidder,” said the activist.
At the moment, Ochoa considered that the lack of new legislation is due to the fact that congressmen “are very sensitive” to the electoral context, and the re-election that some seek stops them for fear of losing votes.
“In the Chamber of Deputies There has not been the correlation of forces that are really on the side of the majority, that are on the side of the people, defending the rights that they should defend,” he said.
He emphasized that the lack of regulations In these 12 years it is one of the reasons why the country is experiencing the current water crisis and he sums it up in one phrase: “if it is drought, it is looting.”
The deputy president of the Commission on Hydraulic Resources, Drinking Water and Sanitation in the Chamber of Deputies, Rubén Muñoz Álvarez (Morena), He stated that they are only waiting for the opinion of the National Water Commission and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) to know if they should include other aspects to the proposal.
Although the ordinary period ends on April 30, the last of the 65th legislature The deputy mentioned the possibility that the general water law could be issued in an extraordinary period.
“Yes, the law is important, but the law is not going to give us more water in Mexico. We need more infrastructure for the country, to build new reservoirs. He Mexico’s valley requires a new system, such as the Cutzamala System, which currently supplies 29% of the liquid that CDMX receives.
“We need to think about whether we need to do the great work of the national aqueduct to bring water from the southeast of Mexico where we have the large water reserves through the rivers Necaxa, Grijalva, even the Usumacinta to bring water to the center and north of Mexico,” said Muñoz Álvarez.
He added that a new national politics to desalinate the water and create a new market, but for which it is necessary that all users understand that the liquid has a financial value: “that we have to guarantee, yes, the human right to the population, but to the large users “We have to charge for water that is not paid for today.”
The perspective, he continued, is to make a National Water Plan that addresses the three major uses of water in the country: hydro-agricultural users, who consume 76%; urban public use, which consumes 14%; while the other 10% is occupied by the industry and is where the existence of irregular concessions must be avoided, “I believe that we have a great task, in addition to the law.”
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2024-04-18 09:21:46