"The nation added a right to water to its constitution a decade ago, but has never created the policies that would ensure it’s met, leaving twice as many people thirsty today."
"Norma Ortiz, 41, of Mexico’s Nuevo León State, has to make tough decisions about water. Does she use the little clean water her family has for bathing or laundry? Is it better to buy increasingly expensive food or overpriced bottled water to cook it?
These are some of the many dilemmas she now faces everyday because of a deepening drought that forced local governments to partially or totally cut off the water supply to residents of Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California states in northern Mexico. The predicament is further complicated by the murkiness of the little water some of them have access to, she said.
“Sometimes we are even afraid to use it,” Ortiz said of the green, foul-smelling fluid filled with tiny particles that make it impossible to see to the bottom of the pot. “It’s good for washing dishes, but those solid residues, we don’t know what they are.”
Ortiz lives with her thirteen-year-old daughter and her eighty-six-year-old mother in Guadalupe, a municipality on the east side of Monterrey. It is the second-largest municipality in the state and 15 percent of the population lives in moderate poverty conditions."
Myriam Vidal Valero reports for Inside Climate News August 5, 2022.
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