User:Oceanflynn/sandbox/Independence watershed (Mexico)



Independence watershed (Mexico) or Independencia watershed is a major watershed in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato—Mexico's former breadbasket —that supplies water to San Felipe, San Diego de la Unión, San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, San José Iturbide and San Miguel de Allende. "NDEPENDENCE AQUIFER San Miguel’s municipal water comes from the Independence Aquifer which lies under the municipality and most of the state of Guanajuato. This ancient fossil reservoir is the life blood of the population and the agricultural economy of the area. As demand for this precious resource has intensified, the rate of depletion has increased and is becoming unsustainable. And, as more water is consumed from the aquifer than is recharged, the concentration of salts, metals, arsenic, fluoride, fecal coliform, and naturally occurring substances increase, posing dangerous consequences to human health."

The municipality of San Miquel is responsible for more than a hundred rural communities. Communities like Juan Gonzalez, with a population of 315 that is about 19 kilometers from the center of San Miguel de Allende—are forced to dig artesian wells. The water in Exhacienda de Jesus has extremely high levels of arsenic and flouride. "The Independence Basin in the semi-arid Guanajuato state of central Mexico is facing serious groundwater resources deficiency due to an increasing demand linked to a rapid population growth and agricultural development. This problem is aggravated by an inadequate evaluation of groundwater resources in the region." "This contaminated underground water reaches tens of thousands of households and businesses in the region through drinking water networks in an area classified as the aquifers of La Laja river and Laguna Seca, known by specialists and people of the region as the 'independence watershed.'"

Guanajuato used "groundwater pumped from deep wells of more than 500 m, which introduced brackish water into the agricultural land." A 2011 study revealed that the national drinking water exceeds the maximum allowable amounts of heptachlor epoxide, lindane, and methoxychlor.

According to Dylan Terrell Program Director for CATIS-Mexico who partners with CEDESA and CODECIN,

""The Independence Aquifer in central Mexico is in a permanent state of decline and contaminated with toxic levels of arsenic and fluoride, which has led to irreversible health complications like dental & crippling skeletal fluorosis in local communities. The seriousness of this over-exploitation and pollution of surface and groundwater, and it's impact on people and ecosystems, reaches far beyond regional boundaries with both national and global consequences.""

- Dylan Terrell 2015 TedX

San Antonio de Lourdes (San Antonio) i

By 2014 because of overexploitation and inequality in the access and control of water in Mexico, a new new National Water Law was being considered. By 2014 agriculture continued to consume "77 per cent of the water, especially in the arid north, an area greatly affected by climate change (CC). Industry uses ten per cent and domestic users thirteen per cent of water." "Most of the water is consumed by agriculture, especially by export agribusiness in the arid regions of the north. In this context of environmental deterioration, overuse of water for irrigation, chaotic urbanization processes and unequal appropriation of national wealth, struggles over access to water and to control its supply have aggravated tensions and social inconformity."

Lerma River
The Lerma River empties into Lake Chapala The mouth of the Lerma River is 20.25°N, -103°W It is km 440 mi long. Its watershed is km2 18,192 mi2 x 106 m3 1.675 x 1011 ft3 It flows through the Mexican states of Querétaro, Michoacán, Guanajuato and Jalisco.

Mexican water management
"During the energy boom of the 1970s, the Mexican government utilized its petroleum revenues and borrowed heavily in order to maintain high expenditures and an overvalued currency. This overspending became untenable during the economic crisis of the 1980s. As oil prices declined, the government tried to maintain high levels of expenditures but fell into a debt crisis. The solution adopted by the Salinas administration (1988 –1994) was to implement ‘‘neoliberal’’ economic policies. These policies included NAFTA, increased trade, and the privatization of certain state enterprises. Also, the government initiated the process of reducing its subsidies to the irrigation districts. Thus the need to increase user contributions to cost recovery in irrigation and WSS systems led to the management transfer in the Irrigation Districts, the increased participation of the private sector in WSS services, and the initiation of the national water registry."

By 2004 the Guanajuato State Water Commission promoted the development of COTAS—"Technical Groundwater Committees—that were formed in areas "where aquifers were the principal source of water." Groundwater resources in the Lerma-Chapala basin were overexploited. The Guanajuato state government "was eager to implement and perhaps expand the decentralization of water management. It also wanted to protect its share of the interstate Lerma Basin, especially from increased interbasin transfers of water to Mexico City and federal government efforts to protect Lake Chapala." Guanajuato "led the push for decentralized water planning" "under the governorship of Vicente Fox.

Since 2012 several organizations have worked together to do research on the Independence Watershed Region in central Mexico. The CODECIN (Coalition in Defense of the Independence Watershed), is located at the University of Guanajuato. CATIS-Mexico, the Center for Appropriate Technology and Local Sustainability.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 1994
In June 1990 Mexico and the United States entered into a formal free trade agreement that could be mutually beneficial to the two countries (Segarra).

In January 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was signed to encourage trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico by eliminating tariffs and lifting many restrictions on various categories of trade goods. In the Guanajuato small rural farmers suffered but industry, trade and tourism flourished. At that time "the Mexican government put into place laws that allowed huge corporations to take over vast amounts of land and foreign investors, mainly from the U.S., and to bring strategic sectors of the Mexican economy under their direct control. The government agency (Conasupo) that used to buy agricultural products from the campesinos was abolished. The campesinos were abandoned to the brutalities of the world market. Credit was cut off to the food-producing sector at the same time as millions of tons of food imports from the U.S. poured in. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses folded. 600 campesinos are forced from their land every day. The Mexican government subsidizes corporations who export from Mexican soil. The displaced peasants who immigrate to the United States subsidize the survival of millions of Mexican people."

"In Mexico, the removal of food price protections, food subsidies and land ownership protections resulting from free trade policies left many campesinos vulnerable to decreased access to the food they were accustomed. Many were no longer able to sustain a living from their own production and their increased need for fluid income have compelled men, and increasingly entire families, to migrate to the United States. In spite of the physical and symbolic distance, connections and mutual influence among transnational families is deep; particularly as it relates to food choice and food consumption."

Following the NAFTA Mexican campesinos were not able to compete with American subsidized corn that flooded the Mexican market after 1994 as competition was "artificially distorted." Even Mexican consumers chose the cheaper American corn and Mexican corn farmers migrated from their rural farms to work in cities. A 2002 study found that "out-migration was highest in Mexico’s highest corn-producing regions, specifically Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Michoacán, Veracruz and Puebla." The trade imbalance was created by billions of dollars in yearly subsidies for American corn. Following free trade, U.S. corn imports "increased from 7 percent of Mexican consumption to around 34 percent, mostly for animal feed and for industrial uses as cornstarch."

American agribusiness corporations
By 2005 Rosset reported that,"In past decades, large-scale agriculture has dramatically reduced campesinos’ capacity to freely decide what to produce, how to produce it, and the means by which to sell or exchange their products."

By 1981 "Data indicated that large scale agriculture produced unprecedented rates of poverty, hunger, and transnational migration among the world’s rural smallholders, particularly in Mexican campesinos."

Large American agribusiness corporations such as Del Monte Foods drove up land rental prices which made it difficult for local growers to compete. Felipe Sanchez, president of a farmers group in Guanajuato state asks, "How can a ranch that farms 70 acres (30 hectares) compete with a company that came to farm 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares)?" Sanchez said. "We'll become laborers on our own ranches." In 1996, Del Monte Mexico was sold to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst.

ConAgra Foods has a plant in Irapuato, Guanajuato.

Leon,
By 2002 the industrialists in Leon-Guanajuato’s main city- had depleted the water resources of the municipality of Romita “little Rome” which is about 300 miles north of Mexico City with a population of 80,000-person that historically was an agricultural community. Although no more wells were to be developed the mayor of Romita allowed Leon’s tanning and shoe production industry to create 500 new wells, to make a total of around 1600 wells. The city of Leon is using Google earth maps to monitor its water. "The Water Advisory Council (CCA), a Mexican NGO specializing in water research, education and policy, has published its 2011 report on Mexico’s water management, sewerage and sanitation. The report looks at data for 50 Mexican cities, each of which has a population in excess of 250,000."

Zapatista
The Zapatista Army went public on January 1, 1994, the day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect. The EZLN opposes economic globalization, arguing that it severely and negatively affects the peasant life of its indigenous support base and oppressed people worldwide. The signing of NAFTA also resulted in the removal of Article 27, Section VII, from the Mexican Constitution, which had guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico. Over the last 20 years, Chiapas has emerged as a formidable force against the Mexican government, fighting against structural violence and social and economic marginalization brought on by globalization. The Zapatista rebellion not only raised many questions about the consequences of globalization and free trade; it also questioned the long-standing ideas created by the Spanish colonial system.

See also Via Campesina.

Immigration of farmers to the United States
By 2001 Durand reported that Mexican immigration to the US had changed. The Dolores Hidalgo municipality in Guanajuato, Mexico, has historically high rates of out migration to the U.S.