From the Editorial Office
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, July 18, 2022, p. 8
The water consumption of the soft drink industry in Nuevo León could satisfy the supply needs of around one and a half million people, a fifth of the population of the entity, so that in a panorama of uncertainty of water availability before climate change, the national water concessions scheme should be rethought, said Greenpeace.
In the publication last week of the Emergency Start Agreement due to severe, extreme or exceptional drought in basins for 2022 -which is issued each year by the National Water Commission-, measures are considered to temporarily limit the rights of large users of the resource, such as industries, in order to supply water for domestic and urban public use to populations that are without liquid due to the current state of drought, the organization recalled.
In a statement, he indicated that although the agreement establishes the legal possibility that the water concession industries can transfer part of the volumes they have available, these measures are not mandatory, which implies that the industries have the final decision and discretionary to deliver or not the water that they have in concession.
He recalled that in Nuevo León there are industries whose operations extract more than 10 million cubic meters of water, as is the case of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, a subsidiary of the Dutch company Heineken, which has a concession of 6.9 million cubic meters, for Coca-Cola products are a little over 2 million cubic meters and Topo Chico’s are 1.2 million.
He added that in several cities of the country the lack of control of urban growth It has drastically reduced the areas of environmental value, which are essential to strengthen pluvial infiltration in the aquifers and achieve greater availability of water for the population. As long as urgent and long-term measures are not taken, and assigning responsibilities in a clear and mandatory manner, we will see more cases like Nuevo León
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