Fears That a Lush Land May Lose a Foul Fertilizer

This article from The New York Times talks about the farms in Mixquiahuala which are fertilized by waste water from Mexico City. Land in Mixquiahuala use to be arid, and farming impossible, but the waste runoff from Mexico's capital that has now been used for generations to fertilize the soil has created productive farmland. The waste water is incredibly dangerous for the people who work the fields and are "laced with heavy metals like lead and arsenic, filled with high levels of pathogens and parasites, and weighed down by grease. " From a distance these fields are beautifully lush and green, but the smell is overwhelming and the workers get "rashes" and become ill with the "colds and the flu".

The Mexican government has decided to build a water treatment plant to treat Mexico City's sewage and waste-water that sometimes floods into the streets of the "working-class neighborhoods in the city’s low-lying eastern suburbs." Mexico City will have to pay for the water treatment plant but the purified water is not suppose to go back to the city, it is instead suppose to continue flowing into the Mixquiahuala farm lands. The farmers who grow their food and make their living on these farms are worried that the water will be redirected back to Mexico City once this water treatment plant is built and their farms will be forgotten. There is also fear that the treatment of the water will take out the nutrients that have made the water such a great fertilizer and the land will again become infertile. " though it may remove harmful contaminants, will also strip away some of the natural fertilizers that even the authorities here say have helped make this valley so productive." some farmers are afraid that the removal of these fertilizers and the failure of they're farms will cause them to go hungry and lose the only way of life they ever knew.

This is very important to look at in Comparative government because not only does this point out the development issue of Mexico formerly not treating it's sewage water, but it also poses as a public policy issue and an economic issue for the farmers.