If the water reforms are approved, Conagua would be racing against the clock to resolve the more than 40,000 backlogged procedures that it had until last June.
Until last June, the National Water Commission (Conagua) had 44,578 delayed procedures (more than 60 business days after submission) related to the issuance of new titles for the exploitation of national waters, as well as for the transfer of rights; This last process would disappear with the entry into force of the new General Water Law and the reform of the National Water Law.
The information from the agency delivered to El Economista via a transparency request, as of last June, revealed that 18,934 issues had to do with transfers of rights and their registration, 20,001 procedures were concessions for the use of surface waters, while 5,643 were concessions for the exploitation of aquifers.
The offices that present the greatest administrative backlog are the Local Directorate of Chihuahua (8,671 procedures); the Lerma Santiago Basin Organization (4,331), which has influence in Jalisco, Nayarit, Querétaro, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Durango and Zacatecas, followed by the Golfo Centro Basin Organization (2,430); The latter is in charge of the cases of Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo, Oaxaca and Tlaxcala.
In addition to the local direction of Zacatecas (2,121) and the Gulf North Basin Organization (2,1873), with operations in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas and Hidalgo.
Risk of judicialization
The draft decree that will be discussed today in the Hydraulic Resources Commission of the Chamber of Deputies establishes, in the transitional periods of the reform of the National Water Law, that “the procedures that are pending resolution by the National Water Commission at the time of publication of this Decree, will be resolved in terms of the regulations in force at the time of its presentation.”
In accordance with the regulations of the procedures for applications for concessions CNA-01-004 for groundwater and CNA-01-003 for surface waters, the agency’s response time must be 60 business days.
However, in recent years it has become common in the country for the delayed procedures in Conagua to be challenged before the federal courts by the petitioners due to the lack of response from the authority.
If the cases are challenged by the petitioners, the legal staff in some offices would face hundreds of cases at a time.
In public judicial files consulted, it is observed that it is common to argue, in amparo trials in federal courts, the delay in attention to concession requests by Conagua, as a way of urging it to resolve the issues.
The office that would present the greatest workload would be the local Directorate of Chihuahua, which has 12 members in the legal area, which gives an average of attention to 722 cases; followed by the Aguascalientes Directorate (435 procedures for each member of the legal area); the Central Gulf Basin Organization (405); the Agency of the Yucatán Peninsula (299) and the Local Directorate of Coahuila (299).
