“Goodbye to drinking water for Santa Marta, says Abelardo, precisely on the verge of a climate-driven mega-drought,” the former head of state wrote on his X account, alluding to the impacts the El Nino event is already causing in the country.

  He elaborated that the now-discarded project would have supplemented the supply coming from the Sierra Nevada using solar-powered equipment to serve the entire territory from the north, “and not from the south, where the big hotel owners and real estate speculators—who can afford their own desalination plants—are located.”

  “Don’t be shameless about water, Abelardo,” demanded Petro, referring to De la Espriella as someone who “never lacked drinking water at his home in Florida,” USA.

  He argued that the country does not need a mining concession to extract copper and silver in southern La Guajira—which would threaten the supply of this vital resource in the region—but rather needs investment in drinking water infrastructure in the northern Caribbean area.

  It is estimated that the water crisis in Santa Marta directly or indirectly affects more than 70 percent of the population, impacting hundreds of thousands of people in practice. Nearly 20 percent of the city (communities located primarily in peripheral and informal areas) is not connected to the water supply system and relies on daily purchases from water tanker trucks.

jdt/las/ifs