Water management in El Salto

There is a significant conflict between the official version of water management in El Salto, and the lived experiences of the population as reflected through case studies and interviews with key informants. The first observation is that water service is irregular, insufficient, and of generally low quality. The municipality of El Salto traverses a variety of landscapes that are quite disparate, including industrial centers and 35 localities. The landscape is diverse including vast stretches of sparsely populated expanses beneath the shadow of some of the nation’s largest industrial facilities and desperate isolated stretches of former farmland beside the regional airport, as well as five densely populated districts in which 80% of the population and 7 of which have over 10,000 residents (El Salto, 2015, p. 38).

Water service is necessarily composed of a variety of disconnected networks, areas that are served by private and neighborhood wells, and areas that are devoid of network access and are only served by tanker trucks. The city public water department divides water management into 7 delegations, each with their own deep well. In total, there are 12 deep wells that are concessioned for the provision of water to the residents (CEA, 2015). Meanwhile, the same deep-water source, the Toluquilla aquifer, is accessed by 61 other deep well consessions within this municipio that are dedicated to industrial use. There are hundreds of others outside of this area and because of extreme over-extraction, the Toluquilla aquifer is currently closed for any further concessions (CEA, 2015). Ten percent of the population is not served by the network but throughout the system there are numerous neighborhoods that experience months of the year with no service, averaging discontinued service of 42 days and a frequency of service that centers around 2 times per week 4 hours per day. While the city water manager Carlos Islas reports that all of the water in the municipality is potable and safe, claiming that he drinks it, the city’s own reports, along with the experiences of activists and residents suggests otherwise (Interview, Islas, July 12, 2018).³⁰ Access to third party water analysis reflects another reality: one in which the water is highly contaminated by both bacteriological and heavy metal contamination (Ciesas, 2018).

Tap-water tests in three areas of the city show high levels of fecal coliforms (ranging in counts from 43 per 100 ml in Las Pintas to over 2,400 in the city center) and levels of both cadmium and arsenic that consistently surpass national water standards limits. Tap water tested at the elementary school in La Azucena contained 0.0046 mg/L of cadmium.

Mexico’s legal limit for drinking water is 0.003. Noting the role cadmium plays in kidney failure, the Environmental Working Group suggests a more cautionary limit of 0.00004 mg/L to protect human health (EWG, 2020). In addition to the school in La Azucena, one home near the school and one in the city center exceeded the limit of 0.01 mg/L for arsenic (0.038, 0.018 and 0.033 respectively). For arsenic, the EWG reports that a limit 2,500 times stricter (0.000004 mg/L) is required to protect human health.

30 Islas can be forgiven for not knowing the situation, despite the fact that he is the director, he was the third director to hold the position in 2018, when we interviewed him. Others are incredulous that he is able to drink this water. In our survey 0% reported drinking this water.

The city’s development plan reports that the city’s water is compromised by the contamination of the river, the overexploitation of the aquifer; urban growth and development without planning resulting in untreated discharges (Plan El Salto, 2015, p. 21). While the residents are left without water, 64% of the total water that is taken from the aquifer is dedicated to industry, (CEA, 2015). The matter becomes critical when the long-term situation with the aquifer is understood. It is currently running an annual deficit [72 million cubic meters]

equal to about 28 times larger than the city’s current total urban allocation [2.5 million cubic meters]. Due to this incredible deficit, the state water commission has declared that Image 30: The state water commission shows that despite the fact that neighborhoods lack water for weeks, months and even years on end, water is prioritized to the needs of industry in El Salto.

there is absolutely no water available for new concessions (CEA, 2015). Despite this, the city officials continue to invite more housing construction and seek to expand industrial activity.

This clearly provides an example of the structural conditions that create the black market for water concessions.

The continuous construction of new housing developments has put the Ayuntamiento [city government] in a difficult position, Islas says. He says after the construction companies finish and pack up, his department finds out that inadequate materials (such as 3 inch drainage pipes for a community of 9,000 homes) were used, or that materials used in the development are incompatible with those of the city. “Our job is to fix what they do.

Once the developers leave, the citizens ask us to fix what they’ve done.” He says that he works less as a regulator and more as an investigator, trying to find out what the builders are doing. “In the new developments, I’m paying attention to what they are doing; asking what they are installing. They say they are putting in a pipe of 3 or 4 inches. Now that I’m here, I’m going to supervise. Before, I don’t think they did it this way. Now we have to repair the damage that they left to us.” But how the Ayuntamiento will pay for the repairs is another question.

The water department is already underfunded and lacking manpower. Yet the Ayuntamiento is cash strapped. Islas reported that he didn’t have access to the city’s water budget. He reports that the residents in his city are notorious for not paying for their water service and he estimates “the majority,” do not pay. This perspective is suspect as our own survey showed closer to 12% of households have stopped paying. Meanwhile, slightly more than half report that it is difficult to pay. This yearly water fee is mostly unmetered and charged at a flat rate of $50USD, an average of about $998 pesos (from {860-1200}) per year. Mexico is already the lowest charging of all of the nations in the OECD, averaging $0.69 per meter of water (OECD, 2009); but here, by not charging for actual quantities of water consumed, the price is potentially much lower. The fact that not everyone gets water, but every household still has to pay means this price is also quite high, in some cases – paying almost $1,000 pesos for no water. The complicated nature of requiring payment for services not provided is illustrated by field notes from December of 2019. While confirming information from our survey and case studies, I came across an area where the residents report that the water service has been interrupted for 10 years. Ironically, they told me how they had formed part of a committee more than 30 years ago to bring water service to the neighborhood.

The city had agreed if the residents would pay the cost of the pipes, the city would only provide the labor. Thirty years later and these were old men now, sitting in wheelchairs and walking with walkers. They were in the street when I came, a dirt street, pleasant enough in the sun. The neighbors quickly gathered to tell me stories about living without water.

Several seniors went to get their bills to show me their debts for water bills of more than

$10,000 pesos. One neighbor, Javier, had a bill of $12,846 pesos. He had recently moved to the neighborhood but the property maintained this debt after the previous owner had not paid for water services for the 10 years without service. The city reduced his bill to

$7,818 pesos: for no water. Without household water residents here rely on tanker trucks and bottled water. Another resident, 76-years-old, with his wife, says they are forced to

buy trucked water every two weeks, paying $400 pesos per month, 10% of their monthly pension of $4,000 pesos. Another elderly man in a wheelchair came closer and the two of them explained the garrafons were too heavy for them to manage. They pay extra so that the deliveryman comes in and changes the water bottles in the stand in their kitchen, costing another $225 pesos, or 5.6% of their income. He explained that his debt to the municipality was currently at $8,000 pesos for multiple years of unpaid bills (without service). “What am I paying for? If I have service I’ll pay, but I don’t. This isn’t progress, this is abuse,” he says (Fieldwork, Dec. 2019).

Both the city administration and residents complain about residents who do not pay their share, but they simultaneously complain that the money that is collected is not used to improve services. Water fees go into a general fund that is then used as seen fit by the cash strapped government spent at the whim of the municipal president. In 2019, the total El Salto municipal budget was $32.2 Million USD (Budget El Salto, 2019). With an estimated 32,000 households, each paying an average of about $50 USD per year for water service, a potential of $1.6 million was generated from water services: yet despite this, the line item budget lists water services as undefined, under a larger rubric of Environmental Protection ($1.8 million) of which $1.6 million is budgeted for waste disposal, and

$200,000 is budgeted for other environmental protections. The water department is left in limbo, continuously petitioning the government for cash assistance and seeking support from even diminishing federal and state budgets. This is a common feature of Mexican water governance (Stong, 2018). Barkin (2008, p. 2) argues that through decentralization and administrative shifts on the federal level, local water systems were bankrupted as federal financing withdrew from this space and attempted to encourage private sector participation. As discussed above with the assumptions that societies can just be changed to fit into market paradigms, in this case the withdrawal of federal finance just did not work. The larger movements towards decentralized governance, promoted through the 1990s (Rodriguez, 1999, Rodriguez & Ward, 1995), left local authorities as the ultimate authorities, while simultaneously discontinuing the federal level support and financial resources required to actually take control of their circumstances. As argued by Barkin (2008), the purpose of these reforms was to open up spaces for increased private sector participation, thereby growing the economy, and under this opened space, states and local actors increasingly looked for private sector support. Wilder et al. (2006) show this opening was encouraged by the World Bank, that the market would prove more efficient, but that in the end the outcomes were context specific. Their review of outcomes throughout Mexico, which echo the conditions encountered in the field, shows that the predicted (and prescribed) financial independence never came about.

As the federal government withdrew support for governance, in general, local communities became more entrepreneurial in their own approach to finding resources. The housing boom turned out to be the perfect solution as zoning variances and building permits became an important source of income for small communities and El Salto was no different. Reyes Ruiz del Cueto (2018, p. 219) writes that for each housing unit the local government received on average (nationwide) $27,000 pesos. Despite this, this increased revenue did not translate

into improved water sector management, and in fact, the opposite is true. Despite increased revenues coming from zoning changes, the water department was unable to expand. Water department director Islas explains that the housing developments, constructed before he arrived, were all constructed with deficiencies that created problems when the responsibility to provide services was passed from the developer to the city. He lists the problems: the wastewater pipes are too small, the pipe sizes are specialized and not universal and thus difficult to connect with the older works managed by the city. He confirms the story that the construction company GEO which built the development in La Azucena, wedged between Rio Santiago and the Ahogada wastewater canal, provided a working wastewater treatment facility for the residents. Unfortunately, at the moment the developer transferred responsibility for the development to the city, they also took their wastewater treatment plant with them. Presumably to provide service for a new development.

Reyes Ruiz del Cueto’ analysis of national housing policies shows that the deregulation of the housing construction created conditions under which the ultimate responsibility was continuously passed between parties. The government was restructured to facilitate the market to self-regulate, yet the constructors then used this same argument to explain why the market was not working. According to Reyes Ruiz del Cueto (2018), the nation’s largest housing developer, “with the poorest track record,” building more than 50,000 houses per year, defended building in risky areas because the government allowed it.

“Homex, one of the developers with the poorest track record, argued that it was merely following local zoning laws that permitted development in high risk zones and that it was the responsibility of the homeowners and local governments to maintain their homes and streets.”

According to Islas, El Salto’s entire water department staff is composed of 30 persons, divided into the 7 delegations, providing water to the region’s 183,000 residents. Because of the constant strain, these workers are overworked; turning on and off valves to rotate access to water within and between neighborhoods while simultaneously a) religiously unplugging the constant sewer overflows which predictably come when wastewater pipes are too small to handle peak flushing and shower hours, b) running from leak to leak throughout the aging system.

Furthermore, as I have encountered in municipios throughout this region, here and throughout Mexico, local water services continue to be run through a patronage system where public jobs are seen as the spoils of ruthless political campaigns. This is very common among all levels of government but it is most acute at the local level (Stong, 2018). Islas, also a political appointee, reports that at election time none of his employees have the security of knowing whether they will continue in their job in the new administration. (This contrasts with the situation in San Cristobal de Las Casas, as discussed below, where the water department consists of more than 200 workers, most of which are protected by a union). Islas reports that this is one of the greatest challenges and represents this one of the biggest problems with management of water services in Mexico, at the local level. Despite the fact that the water system is 50 years old, reflecting a time when the population was

much smaller and the system is a mix-match of new systems connected to old with no comprehensive plan, there is very little institutional history.³¹

The system’s inadequacy was encountered throughout the three years of fieldwork in the area (2016 -2018). In my first approach to the community, looking at the small water providers within the territory, it was common to encounter neighborhoods without water in which case studies reported having no water for an entire year and neighborhoods to be without service for months at a time. In one event, in June of 2017, approximately 40 women (and a few men and handfuls of children) from the housing development La Azucena were attempting to shut down the highway in protest of their lack of water. After several hours of negotiating with the angered drivers and police who were sent out to remove the women, the head of the water department came out. He was defiant and explained that their neighborhood was notorious for non-payment. Many of the women argued that they had paid or that they rent and have no say over the debt. The city manager then explained that the underground aquifer was dry in this area. The women explained that the new development opening right next to theirs, with 5,000 new houses (Las Lilas) still had water. The manager explained that the aquifers run like rivers and that it was possible that in one area there was no water and while in other areas continued to have water. In this way he tried to explain that the situation was out of his control. Despite this, by the next night the water was back on in the community.

Residents in the housing development Las Lilas, a housing development next to La Azucena, reported similar experiences (Fieldwork, 2018; Financial Diaries, 2019). One resident of Las Lilas, Ana, encountered at Friday night meetings of the group Un Salto de Vida, reported that before she purchased her home, when they came to look at the house and during her first few months of residing there, there were no water issues. Water quality was unknown and suspect, but the service was continuous and sufficient. She said she was aware of water problems in nearby housing developments, but she was assured that this was not the case in her neighborhood. That was in 2018. At the end of 2018, the developers began construction on the second half of the development and the first part, her part, was turned over to the city. Soon after, water shortages began. By the spring of 2019, residents in our study recorded daily hardships with water.

One of the factors which determine whether a household faces hardship when there are water shortages is whether there is water storage infrastructure. On demand water service

31 These problems become specifically acute when opposition parties win local elections, and the out-going administrators cover their trails by eliminating evidence or even engage in sabotage. In one case in the local municipio of Poncitlan, interviews with the incoming administration revealed that when they entered in 2012, they entered a city hall that had been completely purged of everything – including tax records, contracts between vendors who rented public market space, and even the physical desks, computers and chairs. At that time we were seeking information about the abandoned wastewater treatment facility in Cuitzeo, about which the city, despite being in charge of, had none:

they were unable to detail when it was built, who built it, how it was designed or its capacity. In general, workers who work in the water sector in Mexico, on the local level, only average 9 months, as opposed to long carreers in the water sector typical in the US (interview with former International Boundary Water Commission Commisser, 2013).

Image 31: Women in El Salto organize a spontaneous strike, stopping traffic on the industrial corridor, to bring attention to the fact that they have gone more than a month without water is ideal, but in almost all cases, absent. Households without storage infrastructure are thus much more vulnerable. In 2019, our cases in this particular housing development reported that when the water came, the water pressure dropped so low that it would not even fill small containers. Islas says that this is one of his present concerns, many of the new housing developments, especially the ones currently under construction high on the hillside of El Castillo, lack storage capacity. The notion that the water runs in the new developments until

Image 31: Women in El Salto organize a spontaneous strike, stopping traffic on the industrial corridor, to bring attention to the fact that they have gone more than a month without water is ideal, but in almost all cases, absent. Households without storage infrastructure are thus much more vulnerable. In 2019, our cases in this particular housing development reported that when the water came, the water pressure dropped so low that it would not even fill small containers. Islas says that this is one of his present concerns, many of the new housing developments, especially the ones currently under construction high on the hillside of El Castillo, lack storage capacity. The notion that the water runs in the new developments until