For the better part of the past decade, the State of Nuevo Leon has been plagued by the same water problems that Arizona and New Mexico have faced -- there is a massive drought in the US Midwest, and it's been a big problem for at least a decade.
On Friday AMLO signed a new law that makes drinking water in NL a national emergency -- that one unlike the building of the Maya Train actually is an emergency.
Granted there is not much that can be done in the short term, cistern trucks will have to be used to ship water to the most affected areas, but there is virtually no short-term solution. Now before you think that NL is some small forgotten state (there are 35 in Mexico) the capital of NL is called Monterrey. Yes that town, is basically one of the most important manufacturing center in Mexico and a very important part of the North American manufacturing hub.
How things got so bad is an exercise in laissez-faire by the governments over the past few years. The state government has been hoping that "Next Year's snowfall would help the water situation". Also, most rivers come from the US, where there is also a distinct lack of water. As of May 2022, the Rio Grande was dry, and New Mexico forced farmers to keep their filed fallow.
There are agreements between Mexico and the US on sharing the water resources (1944), and I suspect that AMLO is going to try to convince the US to give it more of the total flow of water. However, Mexico has done little over the past decade to improve its water situation, whereas New Mexico and Texas have done the opposite, and have invested heavily in water management. There have been a number of Mexican projects proposed to bring water from other parts of Mexico, but these have never been approved by the federal administration.
The Mexican government announces some amount of money to help the water shortage, but the fundamental problem is there is no water available, unless Mexico invests heavily in desalination plants there is no immediate solution, the solutions are reducing industrial use of water, desalination plants and lastly aqueduct.
The first will cause unemployment, the other two will take years. It seems that the solution is emigration and water trucks. For AMLO the fault lies with the "Neoliberal administrations" not entirely sure of the code, but bottom line its not his fault...but then nothing ever is!
Comments