The Autonomous Water Comptroller's Office demands repeal of the National Water Law instead of reform.

PUEBLA, Pue., (apro) .- The National Autonomous Comptroller of Water rejected the announcement made during the morning press conference this Wednesday by Efraín Morales López, General Director of the National Water Commission (Conagua), of a reform to the National Water Law to strengthen the State's control over the resource and at the same time create a General Water Law to regulate the human right to this vital liquid.

In a statement, the organization, made up of researchers, citizens, communities, and water rights groups, celebrated the official's talk of correcting irregularities in the national water concession system, but warned that this will only be achieved with the repeal of the current National Water Law (LAN), which originated under the Salinas administration.

"As was widely expressed and substantiated in each of the 13 "consultation" forums mentioned by the Director General (of Conagua), water is one: you cannot protect the rights and hydrocratic uses of water in one law (the LAN), and then slap on another, which would reduce the "human right to water" to a municipal service, measurable in liters per person per day," the group claimed.

He also expressed concern about the proposal to reform the LAN to replace the current free water market with state control, without the direct citizen participation mandated by the Constitution.

He added that this concern is particularly justified by the development of the "National Agreement," under which Conagua, instead of bringing order to the "disaster" generated by the National Water Law, created a system of "short-term" agreements that maintains over-concessioning, hoarding, speculation, and fiscal impunity.

In this "National Agreement," he stated that the agency has obtained a "temporary donation" of agricultural volumes from Irrigation Districts whose concessions were oversized from the outset.

"A large portion of the 'temporary donations' for industrial and service uses are for volumes that are likely to expire due to non-payment of fees," he explained.

The National Autonomous Water Comptroller's Office recalled that since the 64th legislature, a commitment was made to dismantle the framework of neoliberalism and, as part of this, there was a consensus to generate the citizen initiative of the General Water Law, which was supported by committees in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to replace the LAN.

"We have been surprised by the insistence on defending the Salinas law, on imposing mega-hydraulic projects that would bring water to cities riddled with leaks, on preferring superficial 'agreements' with large users while closing the door to the needs of the people," the organization emphasized.

He added that the researchers, communities, towns, and organizations grouped together in the National Comptroller's Office, as well as in local comptroller's offices, once again offer their support to the federal government in addressing the challenge of correcting over-concessioning, land grabbing, and corruption in water management, and that this can only be achieved through "broadly participatory processes, basin by basin and aquifer by aquifer, throughout the country."

At the same time, he expressed his rejection of "any attempt to exercise water apartheid , where the 'rights' of large users are protected by one law, and the human right to water is sought to be fulfilled by another law, which is what's left over."