Baja California peninsula: one brewery water dispute, five solutions

The Mexican government has plans to complete five water projects in the arid Baja California peninsula by 2024, which could help calm a water dispute linked to the construction of a US$1.4bn brewery in the border city of Mexicali. 

US company Constellation Brands' construction of the brewery to produce Corona and Modelo beers will be put up for local public consultation on March 21-22,  as local groups claim it will cause water shortages in one of the driest regions in Mexico. The consultation will also include questions about five water projects to increase available water and improve distribution.

In the next year and a half, Mexican authorities will kick off construction on three desalination plants and modernization works to improve two water operating systems in Baja California and Baja California Sur states, according to the first part of the 2020-24 national infrastructure program (PNI) that was presented last November. 

The first project is scheduled to begin sometime in 2020, while the remaining four initiatives could start as soon as next year. 

These projects involve total estimated investments of more than 12bn pesos (US$570mn), which the private sector will be financing. 

Baja California peninsula was the region that received the most investment in the category of water projects in stage one of the PNI, snatching five of the 12 water and sanitation projects that private investors agreed to finance nationwide.

THE PROJECTS

The first project entails the construction of a new desalination plant in Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, with an investment of 10.6bn pesos. 

It will supply potable water to the coastal municipalities of Baja California that rely on the Río Colorado-Tijuana aqueduct by taking and treating seawater from the Pacific ocean. When completed, the plant will benefit an estimated 1.7mn inhabitants of the region, according to Baja California’s water commission. 

A special purpose vehicle (SPV) won a 40-year contract to construct and operate the plant under a public-private partnership model back in 2016. The contract outlines three years to design and construct the plant and 37 years to operate and maintain it, before it is finally handed over to the state.

The Playas de Rosarito desalination plant, awarded to company N.S.C. Agua, will be built in two stages. 

The first stage involves achieving a desalination capacity of 2.2m3/s, building an aqueduct and expanding the capacity of the associated storage facility to 20,000m3. The second stage will add another 2.2m3/s of desalination and an aqueduct from tank 3 to the El Florido water treatment plant. 

The other two desalination plants will be built in two tourist destinations in Baja California Sur state.

The La Paz desalination plant, which received 891mn pesos under stage one of the PNI, entails the construction of a 200l/s reverse osmosis desalination plant, which will be transferred to the state after a 20-year concession period. 

Similar in characteristics to the La Paz facility, the Los Cabos desalination plant received 1.1bn pesos from the private sector and construction will also begin in 2021. This will be the city’s second desalination plant. 

According to government project tracker site Mexico Projects Hub, the last two projects involve the replacement of equipment, automation of wells and the improvement of readings to improve drinking water flows in the water distribution systems of La Paz and Los Cabos. 

The general details of the five projects can be seen in the table below.

Project	State	Estimated investment	Start date
Playas de Rosarito desalination plant	Baja California	10.6bn pesos	2020
La Paz desalination plant	Baja California Sur	891mn pesos	2021
Los Cabos desalination plant	Baja California Sur	1.1bn pesos	2021
Integral Improvement of La Paz water operating system	Baja California Sur	414mn pesos	2021
Integral Improvement of Los Cabos water operating system	Baja California Sur	586mn pesos	2021

WATER DISPUTE

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced the public consultation at the behest of environmental authority Semarnat after AMLO commissioned a team of experts last year to carry out an analysis of whether the brewery should be built in the city.

Although construction of the plant is already underway – Constellation Brands said last year that some US$700mn had already been invested – civil society groups have argued that the brewery's operations will contribute to the depletion of the aquifer supplying water to the Mexicali valley.

Representatives of Constellation Brand, the US's biggest beer importer, have said that the brewery would only use around 0.16% of the aquifer's water. This argument is supported by state and municipal authorities, who deny that the plant will negatively impact water availability in the city and surrounding area.

However, the project has faced significant opposition since it was first announced. More recently, opponents of the brewery submitted a request to the state's elections authority IEEBC to carry out a public consultation based on the local citizen participation law to decide whether the facility should ahead.

Since the consultation request was eventually dismissed, most of those opposing the project see a presidential mandate as the only way to halt the brewery.

Construction work on the plant is scheduled to be completed by 2021, according to the US company.

(Photo credit: Gobierno de Baja California)