Historical origin of water pollution and legal analysis of the Atoyac River

Abstract

The hydrological basin of the area subject to the present study is described, to which the Atoyac River and the San Francisco River belong, of which a cultural description is made that allows the understanding of the social significance of its channel and the impact of its degradation on the ecosystem, detriment directly related to the Derivation Works of the rough waters of the Malinche carried out between 1939 and 1947, work prior to the river ditching (1963-1975), within the Micro-basin of the San Francisco river, current municipality of Puebla belonging to the Alto-Atoyac Basin; consequently, the causes that gave rise to this decision are determined, consisting of one of the first inter-institutional collaboration exercises on modern water management in Mexico, and the influence of this decision on the current contamination of the Atoyac River and the negative effects it contracted are described. In the investigation, official technical information is analyzed, interpreted and linked to the positive and current legal system of Mexican water law under the methodology of legal hermeneutics and broken down chronologically in tables under the hierarchy described by the Founding Norm of Hans Kelsen. In a gradual process, the legal regulation of the Atoyac River, its contamination and human rights at risk are deciphered, through the principle of concurrence, public utility and federal ownership of water, its relationship with the state and municipal orders and the factor of constitutional supremacy. Finally, the topics previously described are linked to the Recommendation No. 10/2017 issued by the National Commission for Human Rights on March 21, 2017 (CNDH, 2017), an instrument promoted to determine whether the authorities or public servants violated or not the human rights of those affected in specific populations of the state of Puebla and Tlaxcala, on which the legal scope of the authorities related to the contamination and sanitation of the Basin are verified and the current management model on national waters is questioned.