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Strategies & Market Trends : Water! Water! Everywhere and Not a Drop To Drink! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: big guy who wrote (83)	5/30/1999 11:19:00 AM
From: Arthur Radley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 336

Big Guy, In a PM I referred you to the Houston Chonicle, but you have to be a subscriber so I got the article for you. As indicated, it is pretty disgusting but here it is...(Please note that the area doesn't grow food crops for export per the article) " Mexico 's lengthy drought forces farmers to water cropswith sewage By ISAAC A. LEVI Associated Press CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - In what may be the worst drought in Mexico 's history, reservoirs and rivers are drying up, crops are wilting and cattle are dying by the thousands. Along the Texas border, some farmers have even resorted to watering their crops with raw sewage to keep them alive. "What else can we do? Sometimes we have to accept the little that God gives us," said Fidel Ramirez, 69, who has begun pumping sewage into his 2 1/2-acre plot of cotton in the Ejido San Isidio farm cooperative, just south of El Paso. The Chihuahua state cooperative contains a total of 15 acres, half of them planted with wheat that has begun to wilt. If Ramirez's young cotton plants don't receive rain soon, they, too, will die. Farmers tell of similar problems at the Zertuche and Meson del Norte farms in neighboring Coahuila state. Farmers there switched from planting corn to planting sorghum, a grain used for cattle feed that needs less water, when there was no sign of rain in late March. Now they are being forced to use sewer water to keep even the sorghum alive. The region does not grow food crops for export. However, about half the 20-odd dairy cows on the two farms have died, and the rest have almost stopped giving milk. Meteorologists at the National Water Commission say it could be the worst drought in Mexico 's history. It is the second consecutive dry year across northern Mexico - and for some states the fifth consecutive drought . Federal authorities have already declared five northern states disaster areas and plan to add seven more states within a few days. Rainfall in Sonora state is 92 percent below average this year. In Nayarit state, rainfall this year has been zero. The 20 big dams and water reservoirs in the five states declared disaster areas are down to an average of 19 percent capacity. Even the Rio Grande, which separates Mexico and the United States, is running almost dry for a long stretch of the border. To make matters worse, a heat wave is sweeping northern Mexico , especially the Pacific Coast states. Temperatures in some parts of Sonora and Sinaloa states hovered around 110 degrees last week. Last year's drought was followed by disastrous hurricanes - including Mitch - that brought heavy downpours. But farmers and ranchers say those only washed away valuable topsoil. What is needed, they say, is several weeks of light, steady rain to seep down into the parched earth. Federal aid may provide low-cost loans to farmers and ranchers who lose crops and cattle. Most have been unable to get bank credits since December 1994, when an economic crisis brought Mexico 's banks to the brink of bankruptcy. Jose Figeroa Fuentes, president of the rural-debtors association, Agrobarzon, estimates farmers and ranchers have defaulted on a total of $20 billion in loans - unable to make payments since interest rates more than doubled to 70 percent five years ago. Nationwide, Mexican banks now hold about $68 billion in bad loans.