In the middle of a “water war” that has been going on for half a century, Mendoza officials accused La Pampa of sell bottled water coming from Mendoza.
For the people of Pampa, it is delaying maneuvers to violate a ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice.
The Pampas complaint reached the Court in 2014. In 2020, the highest court established, until it issues a ruling on the underlying issue, that Mendoza must guarantee a minimum flow of 3.2 cubic meters per second.
La Pampa denounces that this measure was systematically breached by Mendozauntil last month she was summoned by the court.
At the same time, a document from the Irrigation Department of that province itself recognized the sufficient existence of the resource to comply with the measure, which fueled the controversy.
The response was, they denounce in La Pampa, a media campaign aimed at delegitimizing the claim, according to which the people of Pampa bottle and sell water, as if that were the reason for the growing drought that is plaguing that province.
The flourishing of Mendoza’s wine and olive industries is contemporary and inversely proportional to the drop in yields in the Pampas fields and its desertification process, especially in the west of the province, they point out from La Pampa.
Although Mendoza’s position on this issue has not changed throughout the different radical and Peronist administrations, currently both provincial governments are at opposite points of the political spectrum.
Alfredo Cornejo strives to maintain a good relationship with President Javier Milei. Sergio Ziliotto, on the other hand, presented separate claims before the Court for owed co-participation items and criticized the basic law.
Everyone bets on the field
Added to this historical context is a complex economic situation.
The IMF, far from the recovery that the government proclaims, announces for the current year a drop in Argentine GDP of 3.5 points.
Even if the harvest is not liquidated, so as not to validate the official exchange rate, which it considers low, the countryside is one of the few sectors that will maintain a significant level of activity.
The concern of the agro-industrial complex, in addition to the exchange rate, after catastrophic events such as the rains and floods that hit southern Brazil, involves the growing incidence of climate change.
Different specialized consulting firms are dedicated to carrying out calculations and simulations to evaluate the feasibility of both the implementation of irrigation systems and concrete silos, much more resistant to tornadoes than the usual sheet metal ones.
With information from agencies.
I.G.
