Playa del Carmen, Q.R. — Playa del Carmen’s mayor says that water quality and prices are poor due to Aguakan, adding that the municipality needs to fight privatization.
During a recent forum, Laura Beristain Navarrete, municipal president of Solidaridad, stressed the importance of having quality water, fair prices and good service, noting that the decision to hire Aguakan several years ago was a bad one.
“Water is everyone’s business. Water is security and life before everything. Aguakan is a company that unfortunately, came to Solidaridad as a bad decision and has caused a lot of pain in the pockets of families,” she said.
She says that as a municipality, we want to have good service with quality and price, but so far the municipality does not have it.
Beristain Navarrete says that regarding Aguakan, the current legal council continues to monitor everything. She says in her opinion, we must fight the privatization of water.
She says that reversing the privatization of water and taking care of the aquifers in Solidaridad are priorities for the administration for which they are working closely with the federal government to solve land tenure in irregular settlements and follow up on the complaints filed against Aguakán, the concessionaire of drinking water and sewerage in the city.
“As you well know, we have been working, supporting and defending the water issue for several years now with Aguakán. What is it that Andrés Manuel says? ‘We have to reverse privatizations. They have done us a lot of damage.’”
She explained that “The fragile water system of underground rivers and caverns that have been repeatedly affected by factors such as irregular human settlements and the actions of real estate developers who have exercised bad environmental practices when filling caves and cenotes for the construction of subdivisions, are the subjects of importance that the municipality has monitored.
“This is why talks to regularize land tenure and introduce services such as drainage in the case of settlements and the flank of urban development have not been granted authorization for construction of new subdivisions. Not until the existing regulations are complied with,” she explained.
“Right now, what we have to do in Solidaridad is to regularize so that the colonies have basic public services because there is also a problem with the water table. We need to have drainage, sewerage, water service, all those things.
“To this day developers are anguished, which is not our goal, because we have not approved any permits. I told them that they cannot come to develop and have Playa del Carmen as their business. That they have to understand that there are already 300,000 people living here and we need to have a different attitude toward this municipality,” she concluded.
