Texcoco, Mexico.- The Lake Texcoco Ecological Project (PELT), a priority of the federal government, registers a physical progress of barely 5.44 percent at the end of March, when there is less than a year and a half left before the six-year term ends.
According to a report from the Ministry of Finance (SHCP), the PELT works are slow. In March 2022, an advance of 2.55 percent was registered and a year later it reached 5.44 percent.
The Conagua, the entity responsible for the works, has 2 thousand 687 million pesos authorized for 2023, but in the first quarter it only exercised 54.7 million, 2 percent of the total budget.
The PELT seeks the rehabilitation of 14,000 hectares of Lake Texcoco, including the 4,700 hectares of the canceled airport; It also includes a park, in which the main advances are recorded.
The detected under-exercise and the consequent delay in works recorded in the first quarter of 2023 repeats the pattern of 2022, when the Chamber of Deputies authorized 2.1 billion pesos for the PELT, but only 615 million, 29 percent, were exercised. Compared to other Conagua projects such as Healthy Water for the Lagoon, the Santa María dam in Sinaloa and the Yaqui and Zapotillo aqueducts, the PELT has lost importance.
On June 24, it will be three years since Conagua -which created a General Directorate exclusively for this project- assigned the first contract for the PELT, a nursery on a 24.2-hectare property, which was won by the construction company ICA for 121 million pesos. , and that produces 500 thousand plants per month.
In May, the LatinUS portal revealed that one of the contracts for the Texcoco project, for 10 million pesos and intended for “project management”, was won in April 2022 by the company of a friend of Andrés López Beltrán, son of the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In addition to an ecological park, the PELT requires hydraulic works, among them, the recovery of Lake Nabor Carrillo, the Ciénaga San Juan and the Texcoco Norte and Xalapango lagoons, as well as wetlands in the Atenco area.
Videos from Conagua indicate progress in all these areas, but currently, the Compranet system does not record any bidding or award process in progress for the PELT.
The most recent relevant contract, for 190 million pesos for water supply works to the Nabor Carrillo and two lagoons, was won by Construcciones Sarevich on January 27.
Workers who work in the PELT works admit the delay.
“The first stage is not even there yet, we are just doing the parking lots, the bike paths, we planted trees, but there is a lot to do.
Pretend that the skeleton is there,” said a worker who works in what will be a baseball stadium.
“We are doing everything, tracks, fence, everything, infrastructure, all that, but there is a rest, a year and a half, two,” added another employee.
The PELT is in charge of the architect Iñaki Echeverría, who on August 25, 2020 presented the project at the conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “The project is developed on three axes: the first is that of environmental protection, the second is going to be the opening from 2021 with public events certain days of the week and the third is to carry out actions for permanent use as a space public of the territory”, he explained.
Juan Pablo Murillo, a resident of Tepetlaoxtoc, involved in the defense of Lake Texcoco, said that the works have been delayed both because of the resistance of ejidatarios to have their land included in the declaration and also because the architect Echeverría was away for several months. for a health problem.
‘There is the pure skeleton’
Hundreds of workers in orange vests and helmets left on Saturday through what would be the door to the NAIM terminal. Half a hundred motorcycles were parked at the entrance, but there were many more who boarded private vans to Mexico City and even more who boarded public trucks going to the San Lázaro bus terminal.
At times, lines of up to 30 workers formed at the exit where their backpacks were checked.
“I still have a contract until December, but I’m calculating two more years,” said the stadium worker who previously worked on the soccer field.
The guards at the entrance, in Federal Police uniforms, refused to allow entry for now.
The main change in the area is a new fence placed along the highway to Texcoco, with which it is prevented from approaching the perimeter fence that the Sedena built with overprices, which were reported by the Superior Audit in October 2018.
“We are doing everything, tracks, fence, everything, infrastructure, all that, but there is a rest, a year and a half, two,” added another employee who denied that there were guided tours as the Federal Government had promised for 2021.
According to the federal government, the PELT began in 2019, after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador canceled the airport.
The Government has presumed that the new park is 15 times larger than the Bosque de Chapultepec, although it has taken a budget from the CNAP, which in 2018 had 1,132 million pesos to protect 185 natural areas, and by 2019 it dropped to 843 million 55 thousand. In 2022 it had 887 million 345 thousand, and in 2023, 930 million 376 thousand, even less than in the previous six-year period.
The engineer from the University of Chapingo José Espino, one of the activists who opposed the construction of the airport in Texcoco and later joined the “I prefer the Lake” campaign, affirmed that with time and the delays he ended up moving away from the project.
