The amount of fines issued by the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa) to companies and institutions for wastewater discharges skyrocketed 85% in 2024 compared to 2023.
In the framework of World Water Day on March 22, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced in Tlaxcala that she would talk to companies to comply with the regulations “and if they don't, sanction them, because those who pollute have to clean the water”.
2024 ended as the year with 95 fines from Profepa for wastewater discharges (those that have been used and contaminated), the highest in the last decade, according to a request for information provided by Profepa to Causa Natura Media.
However, the effectiveness of fines in deterring pollution is questioned by experts. In the last ten years, Profepa has imposed 563 million 340 thousand pesos in fines on agencies and industries that have discharged undue water. This year, until February, the fines amount to 1 million pesos.
“We have seen over time that the fines that can be applied to some companies that release pollutants into bodies of water are like removing a cat's hair, right?” , ironized Raúl Muñoz Delgadillo, president of the Citizens Committee for Environmental Defense of El Salto in Jalisco.
Contaminated discharges have resulted in health conditions in the municipality reported by this Committee, which carries out an annual count of people killed due to causes attributable to the contamination of the waterways.
In 2024 alone, 168 people died, mainly from cancer and kidney failure, according to the Committee's count.
The Government of Jalisco received a recommendation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to rehabilitate the Santiago River in 2020.
In 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights found that the Santiago River received discharges from more than 300 industries in the Ocotlan-El Salto industrial corridor.
Former governor Enrique Alfaro said at the end of his six-year term in 2024 that he had invested 6,725 million pesos to clean up the river, but admitted that sanitation coverage went from 64 to 75%.
“They are involved in the Master Plan for the recovery of the river and have reported that they have an improvement of 60%, 70% and the pollution indicators are not going down. I mean, why? [...] So, of course, the questions go to industries, because in this region between Guadalajara, El Salto, and the entire area of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, there are more than 30,000 industries in these conurbated municipalities,” said academic Adriana Carolina Flores Díaz of the Transdisciplinary University Center for Sustainability (Centrus) of the Ibero-American University.
The Sheinbaum administration has set out to clean up the Lerma-Santiago River, as well as the Tula and Atoyac rivers, a promise that could result in fines.
At the national level, Jalisco is the fourth entity with the highest amount of fines for wastewater discharges, behind only Puebla (139 million pesos); Tlaxcala (112 million) and Yucatán (92 million).
The accumulation of fines by some companies is not a matter specific to Mexico, said Flores Díaz, who has also seen it in the United States.
“And of course, the fines aren't bad. The thing is that it is not true that paying for that pollution will remedy the problem. It's not true that the money you pay - because an industry is polluting - is really going to help restore that river,” he added.
“Many of these industries pay up and the restoration of these rivers, more or less, some physico-chemical factors such as oxygen, temperature, pH, and so on are recovered in five or 10 years. But the biotic community, that is, the life of the river, the macroinvertebrates, the fish, the algae, the mollusks, all living beings, the biodiversity of the river, after 10 or 15 years has not yet returned,” he added.
Faculty of sanction
Conagua and Profepa coordinate to sanction the alterations they detect in the levels of water pollution.
Profepa issues fines in accordance with the General Law on Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (LGEEPA), as well as the Federal Environmental Responsibility Act.
Of the 127 visits made in a decade, 55.9% were total temporary closures and 44% were partial closures.
In accordance with NOM-001-SEMARNAT-2021, industries must evaluate the contamination levels of their discharges in laboratories certified by Conagua. This standard sets the maximum permissible limits of contaminants in wastewater discharges into receiving bodies.
Oxygen, faecal stool and total suspended solids parameters came into effect in April 2023, while others, such as the acute toxicity test and true color (reflecting the level of natural organic matter dissolved in water) will take effect in 2026.
Muñoz regretted that industries are being evaluated by laboratories that pay for these samples.
“This is something that cannot continue to happen because that must be totally independent and with total autonomy so that without interference, in the interest of businessmen or the interest of public servants, the results are not biased,” Muñoz said.
Participatory mechanisms
There are community water monitoring models that have been beneficial, Flores said. One of them is the one implemented by Global Water Watch Mexico, where citizens take water samples.
“We founded it 20 years ago and what we are dedicated to is strengthening the capacities of citizens so that they can monitor the quality of the water in their rivers and streams,” said the Centrus academic.
However, these efforts are not intended to replace the authority's responsibility for monitoring and caring for water.
“The thing is that there are things that are not within reach. In other words, citizens can monitor some things, oxygen, pH. These methods are recognized both in the United States and in Mexico as first-alert methods,” Flores said.
Beyond fines, it is feasible to think of models that encourage environmental care.
“Paying 15 years for the restoration of something is very expensive, restoration is much more expensive than conservation. For this reason, I think that rather than the one who pollutes pays, an alternative could be, for example: the one who prevents its pollution saves taxes. So, (from the point of view of the authority) I'm going to cut half your income tax on industries and you show me that you're avoiding pollution of such quantity,” he exemplified.
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