"As taps run dry, Mexican drought fuels anger over water inequality", 20 June 2022

...Monterrey has been hit hard by a drought affecting nearly 60 per cent of Mexico, where restrictions on domestic water use are fuelling anger about water concessions that critics say grant businesses — including drinks firms — almost unlimited supplies.

“... Now I’ve no choice but to play into the companies’ hands and buy water from them,” says Noyola (57), an activist who filed a complaint with Nuevo Leon’s human rights commission in April accusing state authorities of failing to provide water to residents...

In 2020, US brewer Constellation Brands was forced to scrap plans for a $1 billion factory in the northern border city of Mexicali after local residents rejected it in a referendum.

And last March violence erupted when police evicted protesters who had occupied a water bottling plant owned by France’s Danone in the central eastern state of Puebla...

Five big soda and beer companies alone — among them Heineken and the Coca-Cola Company — extract 16 per cent of the water allocated for industry in Nuevo Leon...

Conagua and the Coca-Cola Company did not immediately reply to a request for comment, while Heineken said in a statement it was donating 28 of its own wells in Nuevo Leon for domestic use and investing $20 million in a new deep well for the state...

“The companies here haven’t had to alter their production and have no water restrictions,” says Raul Bolanos, a member of the Ciudadanos Desconocidos group. “Meanwhile, we have to buy from them the water we do not have access to”...