Dos Bocas is flooded

The most important thing is that nature has already given its notice. He has already announced that the refinery facilities may again be severely and costly flooded.

One of the main news last week was about the flooding suffered by the refinery being built in Dos Bocas, Tabasco. Of course, for the authorities, the ideal would have been for the flood not to occur. But once materialized, perhaps they wanted the news not to spread throughout Mexico. The municipal president of the “El Paraíso” demarcation – where the work is located – released the information about the aggressive flooding.

Regarding the floods in Tabasco, an almost fatal predictability seems to prevail. President López Obrador himself wrote in one of the books he wrote: “In Tabasco, nature plays an important role… Here everything comes to the fore and gets out of hand. In this portion of the national territory, the most tropical in Mexico, the rivers overflow, the sky is prone to storms…”

With those indications, there seems to be little mitigating factor for the refinery’s flooding, which is in a building frenzy. The deputy for Tabasco Soraya Pérez referred to the subject in her column here in El Economista, in Monday’s edition. In the column, that observer stated emphatically: “To this day, we do not know if the Refinery has a hydrological study…” That is to say, technical support related to the hydrology of the site and possible flooding. This is because if these supports are not available, “the nearby riverbeds or large bodies of water may be affected by the work.”

It is widely known that the construction of the refinery has already exceeded its original budget. And last week’s flood will surely drive up construction costs. But the most important thing is not that. The most important thing is that nature has already given its notice. It has already announced that the refinery facilities may again be severely and costly flooded. In the same column by Soraya Pérez, it is cited that several experts on the subject of hydrology ruled “that the refinery should have been built at least five or seven meters above the regulating vessels that they filled.”

And the worst are the collateral effects that the project implies. The externalities then. Huge pumps draw large volumes of water from the site. And those volumes are sent to further saturate the surrounding hydraulic environment, threatening the neighboring population. All to the detriment of public welfare.

bdonatello@eleconomista.com.mx