Of national security and urgent, water work in NL, says López Obrador

Alonso Urrutia

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Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, August 15, 2022, p. 3

Monterrey, NL., Summoned to the Fourth Military Region to listen to the plan with which the authorities seek to mitigate the water crisis in Monterrey and its surroundings, the Monterrey economic and political elite listened to the agreement between the federal and state governments for this work defined, before starting, as national security: 10 billion pesos, in equal parts, to build 106 kilometers of aqueduct from the El Cuchillo 2 dam to the metropolitan area of ​​the state capital.

The alternative to guarantee the water viability of Nuevo León in the short term was accompanied by a clear political definition by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: We want to consolidate democracy, we do not aspire to a dictatorship, to totalitarianism, no. We want democracy and that implies guaranteeing freedoms. Nothing more than in that horizon of freedom and democracy, and that can be our hallmark as a government, we want to pay attention to the humble. Let there be democracy, freedoms, but also justice, democracy with a social dimension.

The new plan to build the aqueduct will provide an additional 5,000 liters per second to the Monterrey metropolitan area to overcome the drought during the next 10 or 12 years. It will begin, announced López Obrador, next week, under the supervision of military engineers from the Ministry of National Defense. The lack of water overwhelms the royals and in response the president offered to classify it as a work of national security –urgent– You will save time and bureaucratic procedures.

It was a federal accolade for the inexperienced government of Samuel García, suffocated by social nonconformity, inexperience, and frivolity. López Obrador himself made his support clear with a laconic they are not alone, the government that I represent, the entire cabinet, will be watching, supporting the people of Nuevo León.

Rules for the IP

It served as a preamble for a diplomatic acknowledgment of the business solidarity of New Leon, before establishing these rules for the construction of the aqueduct: reasonable profits for the companies that obtain the contracts, with the commitment to comply with the deadlines set for their conclusion; that is, nine months, the time necessary to anticipate the next dry season. Even more: the name of the participating construction firms will be placed on the work; no anonymity, because, he emphasized, the honorability and prestige of each company will be at stake.

The long presidential description of the project made a premise clear to those present: access to water is a fundamental human right.

To anticipate the emergence of a new water crisis, López Obrador explained that a special committee will be formed, with the director of the National Water Commission (Conagua), Germán Martínez; Governor García and the leader of the Transformation Industry Chamber of Nuevo León (Caintra), Rodrigo Fernández. He will be responsible for defining the contracts as soon as possible, either unanimously or by majority, whichever favors the agility of decisions.

With the operation of his friend Alfonso Romo (one of the few entrepreneurs who supported the cause of transformation, when the future was uncertain (…) and it is not a reproach, qualified ), the President was able to meet with the leaders of the private initiative. The list of special guests included the Archbishop of Monterrey, Rogelio Cabrera; the former and current presidents of the Business Coordinating Council, Carlos Salazar and Francisco Cervantes, respectively; the leader of Caintra and the local military commanders and the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval; university rectors and local politicians, including Clara Luz Flores, a former candidate for governor for Morena, and Héctor Gutiérrez, a former PRI member who is now a delegate of the Ministry of the Interior in the entity.

All of them, at the incantation of the presidential visit, acquiesced to the differences with the governor and, once the description of the plan was concluded, they applauded the federal intervention.

Governor’s Numbers

Before that audience, García put aside his bravado at the origin of the crisis (they don’t send a fucking pantryhe reproached the Federation then) to cling to the rescue and, with a drastic change of speech, celebrated the support of the center.

The presidential guayabera contrasted with the governor’s tie, who effusively celebrated the agreement that allows him to overcome his first political crisis. Overwhelmed by the situation, with the presidential endorsement, he recycled his proposal for a water plan and calculated it in thousands of liters of water:

Today we are with 13 thousand liters per second. We hope that with the rains of August and September that are forecast to reach 14 or 15 thousand liters per second. With the 5,000 liters from El Cuchillo 2, the 2,000 from the new deep wells, the 1,600 from the Libertad dam, the 1,000 from shallow wells and up to 500 from illegal wells, there are an additional 10,000 liters that guarantee 25,000 liters for the next 10 years.

López Obrador only listened to the governor’s figures, before slipping: You have to have a planwell Monterrey is being a victim of its own successits industrial development. It is necessary to order the development, he emphasized.

The President recounted some of the motivations that accelerated the federal intervention, including a call from the Archbishop of Monterrey, Rogelio Cabrera López, who asked for an audience because he had something urgent to say. He “said to me, ‘you can think that in Monterrey people have money and they don’t lack anything and they will have water. I want you to know that in Monterrey there are very poor people who are suffering a lot.’”

Execution of the plan

With the coordination of the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, the federal government began to define actions to face the water crisis in Nuevo León. A process that, celebrated the President, will not require debt, since Banobras will contribute a saved that he had 5 billion pesos; the state government had a bonus of 3.5 billion pesos and only required a debt of 1.5 billion pesos from the state water agency.

In other words, the resources are already available to make the advances and start the work.

In the immediate term, the General Secretary described, the Army has intervened to provide 51 million liters of water to 162 popular neighborhoods; shored up an irrigation canal in the outskirts of Monterrey to provide more liquid and carried out 22 flights to to bomb clouds that rain down.

Axis in the construction of the federal proposal, the head of Conagua pointed out: We are laying the foundations to overcome the current crisis, but planning is essential. It is no longer possible to continue to dispose of water indiscriminately.