The Buenos Aires Government is intimated for drinking water for emergency neighborhoods

A court ruling known in recent days instructs the Buenos Aires government to resolve the situation linked to the provision of drinking water in the city’s emergency neighborhoods. This is a ruling that gives the government new deadlines to comply with a May 2020 ruling, the operative part of which is reproduced below:Engineer María Eva Koutsovitis, founder of the movement The City We Are Those Who Inhabit It, said that “in the richest district of our country, 15% of its inhabitants do not formally have access to drinking water. 400,000 porteños live in slums and settlements without formal access to drinking water or sewage sanitation.”  “That is why, together with a group of women referents from different Buenos Aires towns in the middle of the pandemic, we appealed to the Justice to demand that the Buenos Aires government guarantee equal access to drinking water in all neighborhoods of the City,” explained the plaintiff. According to him, “in a historic ruling, the justice system agreed with us and since then the government has been failing to comply with the ruling. The Justice has now decided to warn the GCBA, and it will be fined if it continues with the non-compliance.” Within the framework of this judicial process, for example, it was indicated that in the south of the city, one out of every three inhabitants lives in a village or settlement without full and formal access to drinking water, which means that life expectancy is reduced on average by between 8 and 10 years compared to the north of the district. At the same time, infant mortality is doubling.  The lack of formal and full access to drinking water not only limits the reproduction of life, but also constitutes one of the most invisible forms of violence against women and children, since it takes away all kinds of opportunities on a daily basis, the complainants said. The unfulfilled sentence is from May 2020 and now the justice, through the Federal Administrative Court No. 6, intimated the City Government to comply with the sentence to provide drinking water to the 400 thousand inhabitants of the Buenos Aires emergency villages, under threat of applying heavy fines. The questioning of the Buenos Aires justice system towards the government led by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta comes after the city did not comply with the demands raised three years ago. On that occasion, the Buenos Aires government was asked to draw up a contingency plan, hold meetings with the community and establish instances of participation. The complainants also claim that the City Government fails to deliver bulk water to places where running water does not reach. In this sense, between 150 and 250 litres per inhabitant per day should be distributed. This would also involve providing these inhabitants with the appropriate means to store this amount of water, since the delivery of water in bulk by tanker trucks does not make sense if families do not have adequate tanks to store the water needed for all uses safely. It is also pointed out that the Buenos Aires Government did not develop or implement an action protocol to provide clear guidelines for handling and alerting families regarding drinking water. As explained in the complaint, this temporary solution is not enough to guarantee access to drinking water for all families in the villages or to prevent the collapse of cesspools or septic tanks.  

Original source in Spanish