Graphic composition: Esteban Silva.
It's the last week of 2023 and in the Casas Coloniales neighborhood, Ecatepec, the water stops falling. Jenny Valverde depends on vital fluid to care for her 72-year-old mother, who then suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a condition that requires her daughter to wash sheets daily; keep the mother's room clean and ensure thorough personal hygiene.
The family's cistern had kept them out of the serious situation of lack of water that has been experienced in the municipality for years, but this was the turn of this colony of 307 houses. Valverde remembers climbing to the top of his house and finding that, indeed, his water tank had dried up.
Some neighbors told him that the problem had been going on for a month and that he should call a pipe.
“I tried to call the city council to ask them to bring me a water pipe, so that they send it to you, they ask you to have your water already paid for (up to date), which I had paid for, but they tell you that there is a list of more than 200 people and, until your turn, they will mark you so that they can send it to you. In other words, it's not immediate,” Valverde explains.
The need to resolve promptly led her to request a private pipe, which charged her 1,600 pesos for 10,000 liters. However, the shortage in the pipes would not cease.
“From that moment on we here in the house together with my children, because we already started 'when the water fell, if there is not enough water, then today we don't bathe ', or 'who is going to bathe, because there is little water', or 'we cannot use the washing machine as such because the water is leaving'. We can't use it on a daily basis and, practically, we use it for the bathroom, for important things because we don't have any other option,” he says.
The situation did not improve. A few days after the interruption of the service, at the beginning of the year, his mother had to move into the care of other family members who had water.
Public and private pipes
In the middle of the morning, a group of pipers carry water into the Rio de Luz well, located on Adolfo López Mateos Avenue, in front of the Tenochtitlan High School, in Ecatepec.
Among the row of pipes waiting to be filled, there are those painted with the logos of the Decentralized Public Agency for the Provision of Drinking Water, Sewerage and Sanitation Service of Ecatepec de Morelos (ODP Sapase), and also individuals.
Photos taken at the Rio de Luz well. Credit: Juan Luis Garcia.
Sapase manages 96 wells, of which 88 were operating until the middle of last year. Three have garceros, whose role is to guarantee the water that is dispatched according to a payment order in the Sendero, Rio de Luz and Tulpletlac II wells.
According to application 00035/OASECATEPEC/IP/2024, the agency does not supply private pipes for the sale of water. However, residents interviewed say that the private pipes they pay for are supplied in the municipality.
At the Rio de Luz well, a pilot of a Sapase pipe, who chose not to give his name, tells this medium that the well is mixed loaded with public and private pipes.
Today he has 10 trips scheduled, but it depends on a neighborhood representative from the Rio de Luz neighborhood, who confirms which houses he should drain the water to.
Conditional delivery
Sapase affirms that the water service does not exclude anyone. Just call the call center to order a tank car and get a free supply of water. But in fact, neighbors claim to have been excluded.
The ravages of the water reached the Guadalupana colony in March and resulted in the supply by means of pipes. Elsa Arroyo, one of the neighbors, asked how the distribution of a free service that didn't reach her house operated.
“Sapase regularly distributes water in pipes, in quotation marks, to the people who pay their water bill... So Sapase does manage to give free water pipes but, for example, here in the colony they gave them to leaders, to representatives of Copaci, or to the auxiliary authorities. The Copaci is the Council for Citizen Participation and they in turn distributed it to people close to them. When I came to ask why they didn't leave me water, because they told me that because I wasn't on the list and that they left water for those who regularly supported them. Supporting is that they go to the rallies, or whatever they send them,” Arroyo says.
For her part, Jessica García, from the Sauces I neighborhood, in the Fifth Zone of Ecatepec, helped to request water for her neighbors and was part of the free supply of pipes until, gradually, they were left without the service.
“The issue here with the administration of Vilchis (mayor) is that they are managed through what they call referents, that is, if you are part of a group that is related to President Fernando Vilchis you are considered for the program. Since we are not related to the president, our pipes have diminished to the point that today we no longer have the water supply,” he says.
Sauces I is directly dependent on the Cutzamala aqueduct. Water stopped flowing regularly through the pipes 12 years ago due to the lack of pumping force to reach the last blocks of the colony.
The situation affects the residents' way of life, García says.
“Well, to start with is to store it, you wash your hands, you have a tray where you collect the water, you have a bucket and you use that same water for the bathroom. The water in the washing machine is used for the benches for the bathroom and for the floors,” he says.
This situation has led to her having to pay for the delivery of water through private pipes. The thousand liters range from 150 to 220 pesos, he points out.
On the other hand, receiving the free service does not necessarily mean that people's need is completely satisfied. Residents of the Central Michoacán neighborhood reported to this media that, although Sapase sends 25 pipes a week, this amount is insufficient for the number of people who live there.
“For a thousand liters they don't come to sell you, we have to buy the whole pipe,” says a neighbor who asked not to be identified. “Every thousand liters are sold to us from a minimum of 180 to 220... Before, for example, private pipes were even given to us in 90 pesos and I don't know, it suddenly increased to 100% because right now it's already at 180 pesos, the thousand liters. So imagine here there are a lot of vulnerable people and people who live day to day. With a minimum wage, we either eat or buy water,” he adds.
In Mexico, the minimum wage is 248.93 pesos a day.
In 2020, Ecatepec was the municipality with the highest number of poor people in the country after Iztapalapa, with a total of 630,000, according to data from the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval); and the sixth with the highest number in extreme poverty: 96,000.
The low availability of resources aggravates the crisis to supply water when the vital liquid does not arrive through the pipes. According to data from the Ministry of Welfare, there are 128,000 people without access to water in their homes in the municipality.
Photo: Patricia Ramírez.
“In the case of the human right to water, the minimum content is availability, meaning that there is a continuous flow, access, the quality of the water that arrives, that it is the water that can be drunk..., and then that it is also affordable. In other words, the price that must be paid for the service to access this continuous flow is not disproportionate to other human rights, that do not pose a risk to food, that do not pose a risk to health, that does not jeopardize education. Many people have to pay a lot for water and then have to allocate a significant part of their salary... and that forces them to neglect the self-protection of other assets,” explains Rodrigo Gutiérrez, a researcher at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
During the discussion “Water and Climate Change: Space for Dialogue Around the Water Crisis”, water researcher Fabiola Gress emphasized the inequality of water consumption that exists in the Valley of Mexico; and stressed that other uses of water, such as commercial water, have been prioritized over the supply of housing, which has an impact on the current crisis.
Asked in an interview about whether the use of pipes perpetuates dependence on this form of distribution, she pointed out that it is a complex position in which families from conurbated areas are left, since in many cases they have no other option.
“It's that or nothing. So it's not that they have an alternative or several alternatives to choose from, but precisely because their status in many cases as irregular settlements does not allow other measures to be implemented. Even like other plans and programs, such as other types of project financing and such that they want total infrastructure. In other words, they are legally in a vacuum that does not allow access to those other projects... So it seems to me that the topic of pipes is a way in which people have found to be able to overcome that need they have. There are also cases of people who are not irregular settlements, that is, they are regulated settlements and who do not have access. In other words, this topic you say about Ecatepec, about housing, where they do have an infrastructure inside the house, but well, they have a tanking system that is actually quite irregular. In that sense, it's not the infrastructure either because they have it there, but rather the supply and distribution,” Gress points out.
The kite boom
In recent years, pipes have become part of the urban traffic landscape in cities and Ecatepec is no exception. At the end of 2020, the municipality with the third largest population in Mexico had 19 Sapase pipes, according to an information request 00032/OASECATEPE/IP/2020.
So far this year, the program called Normal and Amparos has made 2,602 trips through pipes to neighborhoods in the fifth zone and the upper part of the municipality; while the Nocturne 59 program has delivered 963 trips, totaling 539 million 630 thousand liters between January 1 and June 11.
This represents an increase of 54.80% compared to the same date last year, engineer Edgar Guzmán, coordinator of Pipas de Sapase, reported on the institution's social networks.
These trips can be improved with technology, says researcher Miguel Guajardo of the Mexican College. Especially, because the dynamics of lack of monitoring allow water to be stolen, he said, so he proposes a GPS to know the routes, plus water level sensors.
“It has to be combined with this these small sensors that measure the water level in the tanks and that suddenly if we realize that the vehicle stopped on another route and lost a significant part of the liquid in that section, because then we already know that it was not a constant leak along the road, but that they extracted it there. So it's a combination of GPS, a control panel and sensors to measure the pressure that the tanks carry and the amount of water. It is an important investment, but it is an investment that is made only once if the pipes are in good condition and that once again allow us to guarantee significant savings of liquid with, let's say, the savings that would be made in the loss of this liquid in 3 or 4 months, these technologies would basically pay for themselves, right?” , said Guajardo.
Private contract
On July 1, 2021, Mayor Fernando Vilchis announced that the Municipal Presidency would not renew the rental contract for nine private pipes and that, instead, it would use those resources to drill wells.
One of the wells taken in protest by private piperos was the Pozo Sendero.
Causa Natura Media visited the well and found that, despite the City Council's announcement, private pipes provide the water supply to help the local government.
Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
A verification carried out by this means of one of the private tank cars on the site found that it is a vehicle with debts in the registry of the Taxpayer Services Portal of the Ministry of Finance of the State Government.
Causa Natura Media requested, through a formal request, an interview with the director of Sapase Eli Benjamin Hernández with a copy of the Municipal President Fernando Vilchis, through the route indicated by the Social Communication Department of the City Council. However, as of press time, this report has received no response.
Other Sapase pipes are abandoned on the site. The garcero del Pozo refused to give statements.
Pipa de Sapase abandoned in the Sendero well. Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
CAEM: adjunct or extraction
Not only are individuals supplied in Ecatepec, but also the pipes of the Water Commission of the State of Mexico (CAEM).
These are supplied from the Cerro Gordo tank, Sapase said in information request number 00099/OASECATEPEC/IP/2023, made in June of last year.
“CAEM supported the municipal government at the time, lent it the pipes... but it is also a reality that when the PRI was in the (state) government, CAEM shut off the water in Ecatepec. Because they send it as a block and that block that belonged to Ecatepec didn't let it arrive, because I was on those routes, on the routes that were taken in Cerro Gordo,” García said.
Photo: Edomex Government.
On the other hand, the CAEM offered this media a list of permits issued for the distribution of water to pipes in the State of Mexico.
This year 67 of the 92 permits for this year incorporate water dispatch in Ecatepec, among other municipalities, with water coming from the 306 TX “Los Rosales” well, located in the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl.
66% of the fleet of private pipes approved by the CAEM that attend Ecatepec has a model that is more than 20 years old.
Of the 92 CAEM permits for pipes to distribute water in 2024, 52% do not appear in the Edomex vehicle ownership record, while 8% carry debts or license plates due, according to a verification carried out by this means.
While the water problem is not exclusive to Ecatepec, transparency is an outstanding debt when it comes to pipe permits in the State of Mexico.
Causa Natura Media requested permits for pipes and wells from 32 water agencies in the State of Mexico, but only six provided information on permit holders and another 17 on extraction wells.
Organization around water
For researcher Rodrigo Gutiérrez, the low storage capacity that people have in neighborhoods, combined with delivery provisions, lead to disputes over the delivery of water.
“Managing a pipe isn't easy. It usually generates, even if this seems like a joke, ruptures in the fabric of the community,” Gutiérrez said.
However, local government provisions play a triggering role in disagreement. Protests over water in Ecatepec have become commonplace. They seek to negotiate with Sapase to stabilize the water service for the colonies.
On June 20, residents of the neighborhoods of Chulavista, Izcalli, Ecatepec and Colinas carried out a blockade in the vicinity of 30-30 Avenue due to a broken pipe on a private property.
The director of the Government of Ecatepec, Katia González, said on her social networks that she did not receive the summons to any meeting requested by the demonstrators, but stated that the authorities would change the damaged piece in the pipe to restore the water immediately.
Laila Abdala, delegate of the Izcalli Ecatepec subdivision, told this media outlet that pipes were sent by Sapase to calm the spirits of the Protestants.
“So while we're here there are some neighbors protesting, what Katia did was send people pipes to stop them from attending the demonstration,” she said.
Photo: Izcalli Ecatepec Delegation.
He added that Sapase has refused to deposit water beyond the edge of the houses, which has put residents on logistical adventures.
“Regardless of the fact that they cannot supply all people, their hoses are 10 meters long and they told us that they only have the obligation to leave water at the foot of the street, on one side of the entrance, they have no obligation to leave it in a tank further away, or a water tank, that they have neither motor pumps nor the hose necessary to be able to give water to all the people and there is a colony, Colinas, precisely where people only have water tanks and there they are giving the thousand liters of water in 350 pesos, to us in 260 and so on and so on in colonies”, Laila points out.
De facto measures, such as the closure of streets by neighbors, are usually schematically answered with pipes, but water problems persist over time and cause neighbors to demonstrate again.
Months ago, residents of the Guadalupana neighborhood carried out a blockade after Holy Week so that the government could respond to their request for water, Arroyo says.
“It was a desperate measure, I am not particularly in favor of blockades because it affects third parties and especially because here in the municipality they are no longer an option. In other words, in a desperate act that you don't have water, because you don't have enough to buy it, you have sick people at home, you go and decide to block, to demonstrate, but the municipality gives you a pipe, and you're going to get up. So right now the fight for water in Ecatepec is an immediate struggle; a social movement has not yet been formed,” Arroyo explains.
*This is the second report in series #RedEnAbandono, a special about the damage to hydraulic infrastructure and its consequences in Mexico. Originally published in Causa Natura Media.
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