Govind Tekale
While Coca-Cola FEMSA celebrates receiving Alliance for Water Stewardship certification for its San Cristóbal bottling plant, local activists call it a “farce.” This March 2024 opposition petition highlights a stark reality: the plant pumps 1.32 million liters daily from deep wells while nearby residents often walk hours to collect water that might be contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria.
“This certification serves only their economic and political interests,” reads the petition by Cepazdh San Cristóbal, “while we have communities without access to quality water.”
The bottling plant’s two wells, drilled to depths of 130-200 meters, tap the San Cristóbal de las Casas aquifer (officially designated CHA012/0712). According to CONAGUA data, FEMSA holds concessions allowing extraction of 311,040 m³/year from one well and 188,878 m³/year from another—a combined legal allowance of nearly 500,000 m³ annually.
Meanwhile, municipal water service SAPAM provides just three hours of water every other day to many downtown residents, and rural areas fare worse. One resident, Juan Urbano from San Felipe Ecatepec, walks up to two hours daily for water as shallow community wells (typically 25m deep) run dry.
For the privilege of its substantial water extraction, FEMSA pays approximately 2,600 Mexican pesos (about $155) annually for permit fees. The company’s AWS certification, granted in September 2024, acknowledges 17 findings requiring correction—including eight “minor non-conformities”—yet still approved the Core-level certification.
“With a policy supported by the National Water Law, CONAGUA grants concessions to large corporations and companies with extractive activities that plunder and dispossess us of water, like FEMSA Coca-Cola established in our city,” states the March petition.
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