It found monitoring and enforcement failures as well as little evidence of an “alleged implementation of an ecological restoration plan” for the region.But that trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement, also known as Nafta, did not allow for any penalties.In 2017, the state of Jalisco, together with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, studied the river again and found its condition to be “critical”, with levels of many pollutants that repeatedly violated the permitted limits.“The Santiago River is, for me, one of the most shameful, most terrible stories that Jalisco and Mexico have,” said the state governor, Enrique Alfaro.Just after taking office a year ago, Mr Alfaro visited the bridge over the waterfall that has become the symbol of the river’s pollution and promised to tackle the problem — a bold pledge, given that both his power and his resources are limited.Mexico’s regulations are antiquated and riddled with loopholes.Mexico overhauled its environmental regulations and set up new national agencies after the original 1994 Nafta brought international attention to its lax standards.But that impulse quickly dissipated as Mexico worked to attract investment, and a quarter-century later, Mexican regulations generally allow factories to dump more contaminants into the water and the air than is allowed in the US.There is no limit to the number of factories allowed to discharge waste into a river. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? The child had been playing around the area where 300 firms discharge, These firms had begun to settle by the river in 1967, when the government established Guadalajara's first industrial park.
The ball unexpectedly bounced and fell into the river. Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when
Miguel Angel Lopez Rocha fell into the Ahogado canal which receives toxic industrial waste from one of the largest industrial corridors in the country. But in practice, with threadbare budgets and little technical expertise, they are the weakest link in enforcing regulations.That is what Carlos Maldonado, a former wheat farmer, found out when he ran for mayor of Poncitlan, a largely rural municipality upstream from where the river loops around Guadalajara.Over decades, he had seen mounds of foam form in the irrigation channels carrying river water to his crops. “But there are companies that don’t, even when they have the economic means.
The Santiago River flows loaded with toxic pollution (Photo: Seila Montes) Another company unloading its leachate into the river is the Los Laureles waste dump (operated by Caabsa Eagles), which receives waste from the city of Guadalajara and surrounding municipalities. "On Jan. 26, 2008, Miguel Ángel López was playing with a ball along the banks of the Santiago in the La Azucena neighborhood. Initially the doctors seeing him in the Occidente General Hospital suspected poisoning from some kind of opiate. In that time, they have seen neighbours suffering from kidney disease, respiratory illnesses and skin rashes. A proposed overhaul of wastewater limits has stalled, blocked by lobbying from industry, according to Luis Esparza, an environmental lawyer, and Conagua officials.“The law is made to normalize polluting activities to give them the seal of approval legally,” said Cindy McCulligh, an environmental expert at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas who studies the causes of the Santiago’s pollution.
A study by the Mexican Institute of Water Technology (This is the reason why the bucket loads of mangos, guavas, prickly pears, lemons and avocados were already a thing of the past when Sofía Enciso, Enrique's daughter, was born.