On the side of an irregular path of brush, trees and dirt, a stream flows down. The water is green with small bubbles that slide on the surface and flow a few meters later into the Madín dam. The smell of drainage intensifies in the midday sun, and where the stream touches the dam, a layer of dark cream forms with branches and debris.
Away from the smell, there are two men under an umbrella. The fishing rods and the empty bucket betray a fishing attempt. From its side the view is more enjoyable. The dark green of the trees harmonizes with the water, and the cold air conceals the smell of silent drains that are reaching the dam.
“This is a discharge that comes from Nuevo Madín,” says Marcela Galar Martínez, researcher and current director of the Aquatic Toxicology Laboratory of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), as she points to the stream.
Galar Martínez is also a neighbor of the area and has been studying the Madín dam for more than 20 years. She, together with other researchers, is a voluntary member of the Madín Dam Basin Commission, with the purpose of conserving this body of water, located on the borders of Naucalpan and Atizapán, State of Mexico, a few minutes from the country's capital.
Contamination from wastewater discharges is the main problem of the Madín dam. There is no official figure, but researchers and neighbors agree in interviews that there are more than 50 drains. In 2022, the Atizapán government recognized 23.
According to researchers and neighbors, the origin is in the surrounding subdivisions. Wastewater treatment plants have been inefficient and the waste goes directly to the dam, which is the source of water supply for more than 150,000 people in the State of Mexico, mainly Naucalpan.
In the middle of this year, it was reported that this water would also be sent to Mexico City.
The Madín dam has two water treatment plants, one of which was recently inaugurated with a lifespan of 30 years. This should help eliminate pollutants, but studies carried out by researcher Galar indicate that the levels of contamination are still there, in water and sediments; in algae and fish; in the consumption of thousands of people when they open the faucet, when they drink water, when they brush their teeth, when they clean and wash.
“In general, it is a complex cocktail of contaminants, as is any contaminated body of water, but the case of the Madín dam has the characteristic that water is used for human consumption and most of these contaminants are not removed with conventional drinking processes,” explains researcher Galar.
Contaminate from the Sixth Section
While the sound of the wind prevails at the Madín dam, urban development roars in the surrounding area. Cars travel on two- or four-lane roads with no space for pedestrians. On the outskirts of El Cerrito, one of the green areas near the dam, the advertisements on red canvas continue to advertise the Terralago residential project, owned by the company Fortem Capital.
Last August, Terralago obtained a provisional suspension by the Fourth District Court after neighbors, backed by researchers from the Madín Dam Basin Commission, opposed the project that included 1,533 homes and two 12-level residential towers.
Terralago would be another development in an area of subdivisions such as Lomas Verdes or Nuevo Madín, 15 minutes from Ciudad Satelite, another major residential reference for the country's capital in the 1960s, but groups of residents in these areas are opposed to new projects.
Studies on pollution from discharges and water scarcity in recent years reject more housing complex constructions.
“We realized that it's not just about the lack of supply. They promised us subdivisions with zero discharges, but the regulations are not being complied with because our treatment plants are not operating and the wastewater is discharged to the Madín dam. In the end, we are participating in that pollution,” says Valeria Del Portillo, a neighbor of the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes.
A zero-discharge fractionation refers to a treatment system in which wastewater can be processed for reuse. The Feasibility Agreement to study the viability of the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes, run by the company Club Lomas Verdes S.A. de C.V., dated July 2000, indicates that the project must have “a zero emissions system”.
Neighbors report that this system has never operated. They began to notice this with the drinking water and treated wastewater they have in their homes at the request of the developer. They've never seen a drop come out of the treated water faucet.
“Here are also the commitments regarding underground facilities and wastewater treatment,” says Del Portillo while holding the Official Gazette of the Government of the State of Mexico, dated May 26, 2003, in which the agreement was published for the company to develop the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes.
Del Portillo was given a copy of the Official Gazette when he bought the lot that is now his house. This specifies that the developer must carry out projects for the supply of drinking water, drainage and discharge of sewage and rainwater.
On paper, the works were built by the developer and handed over to Naucalpan's Decentralized Public Agency for the Provision of Drinking Water, Sewage and Sanitation Services (OAPAS) for operation.
On a tour at the end of October for this report, it was found that the wastewater treatment plant lot XXXIV, lot XLIV and San José Del Real, in charge of the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes, was stopped. The staff on duty at OAPAS Naucalpan simply said that it was not in operation for the time being.
“It seems that they are protecting developers, not citizens or the environment,” Valeria accuses.
Like the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes, the Terralago project has a Conditional Feasibility Agreement CONV/FACT/002/2022 in which it asks the developer to manage their wastewater under the concept of zero discharge, so it should have a treatment plant and a connection to the municipal drainage for discharges.
“In the case of downloading to the municipal network, you must make the corresponding payment for these sanctions,” explains OAPAS Naucalpan in a response via request for information in which it was asked what the downloads of this complex would be like.
For its part, the municipality of Atizapán, in charge of the Madín dam, has recognized that there are discharges in the basin.
“We detected 23 points of waste discharges, but we cannot determine the degree of contamination they might have, however, we are working to determine which of the discharges are highly polluting, or if in any way, the treatment plants are meeting the requirements of the standard,” said Pedro Rodríguez Villegas, municipal president of Atizapán, in 2022.
However, that same year, OAPAS Naucalpan denied, via request for information, that untreated wastewater would reach the Madín dam directly. “The water generated by treatment plants is reused for irrigation of green areas and gardens. There are no discharges of untreated water,” the agency replied.
The answer contradicts the Drinking Water, Sewerage and Sanitation Service of Atizapán de Zaragoza (SAPASA), which is the body responsible for the Madín dam, which recently responded via a request for information to Causa Natura Media, which had a record of five sanctions.
The first in 2020 in the name of the user José Otoniel Noris Barrera for connecting to the network without authorization. Meanwhile, between 2022 and 2024, the BMW automotive agency and two stores in Plaza Bona, as well as the Lago Esmeralda complex of Residencial Atizapán, were sanctioned for open-air discharges for use other than the contracted one.
There are no records about Nuevo Madín or the Sixth Section of Lomas Verdes, despite neighborhood complaints.
A cocktail of aluminum, drugs and pesticides
“In the dam water and in the sediments we can find contaminants of various types. There are metals such as aluminum in very high concentrations, at certain points they even exceed the maximum permissible limits for the protection of aquatic life,” says researcher Marcela Galar Martínez.
In monitoring for 20 years, he has documented the presence of aluminum, but also of drug-type contaminants such as diclofenac, naproxen, acetaminophen, some antibiotics such as penicillin B or penicillin G, and even pesticides.
In addition to waste discharges, there are problems with the spill of leachate, toxic liquids from garbage dumps, the Santiago Tepatlaxco landfill and others that operate in a clandestine manner.
As head of the Aquatic Toxicology laboratory at the National School of Biological Sciences of the IPN, Galar Martínez has carried out toxicology studies to evaluate the impact of pollutants.
“Fish and some aquatic invertebrates were used to see what impact this toxic mixture had and we saw that it generated oxidative stress, damage to genetic material, the cells of these organisms died, congenital malformations occurred, that is, it was a whole set of toxic effects that were putting the lives of these organisms at risk in the prey,” the researcher explained about one of her first studies.
In 2021, the Madín dam had a mass death of fish. Hundreds of tents were piled up on the banks covered with a dark, foul-smelling mixture. The explanation was that water levels had dropped and the concentration of pollutants facilitated the loss of oxygen, thus causing mortality.
A year later, Marcela Galar, together with doctors Karina Ruiz Lara and Sandra García Medina, published a study that evaluated the impact on human health of those who receive water from the Madín dam in their homes. This analysis was carried out between March 2019 and September 2021 with 142 healthy participants ranging from 18 to 65 years old.
“What we observed is that just as in fish, as in aquatic invertebrates, oxidative stress also occurs, and there is also damage to genetic material in exposed people. Oxidative stress is related to cancer, to diabetes, to Alzheimer's,” Galar explained.
Two water treatment plants and a corruptible law
For Eduardo Espinoza Medel, research professor at the Acatlán School of Higher Education of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the origin of the problem with the dam has to do with faults in urban planning and legislation.
“A concession permit is needed for discharges to rivers, as the law says. Naucalpan in some cases has it and Atizapán does not have permits... Treatment plants are necessary because the legislation says that the consumer, user, polluter is the payer. The one who pollutes pays, and is obliged to repair the damage caused,” Espinoza Medel explains.
It also states that in cases such as the Terralago project, water bodies such as OAPAS Naucalpan and SAPASA de Atizapán are allowed to transfer volumes of water to wells developed by individuals. “They can't give up a drop of water to a private individual and that's what they're doing,” added the professor.
Legislation also plays an important role in the pollution studies carried out by researcher Marcela Galar.
SAPASA has transparently reported that its Water Quality Department performs toxicity tests on repeated occasions. However, most of these evaluate parameters such as Escherichia Coli (faeces), conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and other guidelines that do not include contaminants such as aluminum.
Just in June of this year, SAPASA announced that it was working on the assessment for 38 parameters under the NOM-127-SSA1-2021, to expand the scope for studying pollution.
To deal with pollution, the Madín dam has two water treatment plants, one of them, Madín II, was inaugurated on October 27 last year by Conagua, together with the governments of the State of Mexico and Mexico City, at a cost of 517 million pesos. The objective is to clean all the contaminants in the dam water, so that it reaches drinking water to the population of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico.
“All subdivision and building developments should have a treatment plant and that would help water treatment plants because the load of pollutants would be lower,” insists researcher Espinoza Medel.
“We have requested several times to know the process of the new water treatment plant to identify which processes were incorporated, according to what they (the authorities) told us. Of course, they allowed the removal of some of the contaminants that we had detected, but I don't know what it will be like and I couldn't say if this really solves the problem,” says researcher Marcela Galar.
Future actions
With the recent change of federal administration, meetings between the agencies and researchers of the Madín Dam Commission have stalled, but it is still pending compliance with Recommendation 135/2023 issued by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to Conagua, the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa), the government of the State of Mexico, and the municipal presidencies of Atizapán and Naucalpan.
Recommendation 135/2023 recognizes that there are violations of human rights to a healthy environment and to water sanitation as a result of persistent pollution in the Madín Dam.
With the death of fish in 2021, the Madín Dam Basin Commission asked the CNDH for a declaration of environmental emergency for the dam. The agency took two years to verify and respond, until last October the recognition that there is contamination from uncontrolled municipal wastewater discharges and waste from the Naucalpan landfill was published.
From now on, they must jointly draw up a rescue plan. Despite the fact that Conagua shared at the time a letter of non-acceptance of Recommendation 135/2023.
“Definitely, it is necessary to accelerate the process because the time set by the CNDH has passed,” says Marcela Galar Martínez.
And while the action plans are about to be taken care of by the authorities, wastewater continues to flow through the ravines to an inoperative treatment plant and two water treatment plants in question.
*This is the second report in the #AguaContaminada series, originally published in Causa Natura Media.
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