Angelica Enciso L.
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, February 7, 2022, p. 7
Ten years after constitutional article 4 was modified to guarantee the human right to water, the general law on the matter has not yet been promulgated and even the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has already determined that there is an omission of the Legislative. In this period, the scarcity of the liquid has increased, the deterioration of the resource, the inequity in access and the water millionaires
they keep grabbing it.
Pedro Moctezuma, from the group Agua para Todos and coordinator of the Research Program for Sustainability of the Autonomous Metropolitan University, said that the Chamber of Deputies must prepare the new legislation, since it was established in the third transitory of the constitutional modification. This happened on February 8, 2012.
On January 24, the Court determined that the Congress of the Union incurred in legislative omission by not having issued the general water law, which violates the legal powers of the municipality in the matter and affects its participation in the access and sustainable use of water resources and its ability to provide the population with public services of drinking water, drainage, sewerage and wastewater disposal.
.
In an interview, Moctezuma recalled that there is already a consensus opinion in the last Legislature, the result of 36 forums held throughout the country and that was presented last September in the Chamber of Deputies before the then United Nations rapporteur of the human right to water. , Leo Heller. He considered that the Senate can give continuity to the process and trusted that there is a proposal from the Executive.
He warned that the National Water Commission (Conagua) is tied by the hands of the National Water Law, issued during the six-year term of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, since it has a rigid legal scheme in which the great interests of the country are protected
. He added that it should be taken into account that a victim of this legislation is the environmental sector.
Now we warn of the danger of the big interests that were present in the 65th Legislature, that seek to take over the Water Resources Commission and that can interfere in the process.
He gave as an example that Mario Mata, deputy for the 5th district of Delicias, Chihuahua, was part of the 2020 conflict at the La Boquilla dam – when Mexico had to deliver water to the United States in the context of the 1944 International Treaty – and even called for the separation of that entity from the federation. In addition, as president of the municipal board of Agua de Chihuahua, he authorized the creation of an artificial lake in an area with scarcity.
