Unknown people have been extracting sand from the Laja and San Damian rivers in San Miguel de AllendeĀ in broad daylight, earning millions of pesos.
News website Periodico Correo published an article that documents the looting, and despite the complaints by local residents, authorities have not stoppedĀ this illegal activity and no one has been detained so far.
Periodico Correo started their investigation around September 20, taking photographs of heavy machinery and trucks used to extract and transport the sand; andĀ doing the math for one day period, 18 trucks with 30 cubic meters capacity, are filled with sand everyday, between 7 am and 7 pm.
In just one day, this business results in $867,000 pesos ($43,300 USD), approximatelly 26 million pesos (1.3 million USD) a month; as these people have beenĀ extracting an average of 4,686 cubic meters of sand per day.
It is worth mentioning that most of these vehicles have Guanajuato license plates.
This situation has been going on for over a year now, and The National Water Commission (ComisiĆ³n Nacional del Agua:Ā CNA), agency responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the National Waters Law, Ā declared that so far, they have filedĀ two criminal complaints beforeĀ the Attorney General’s Office for illegal extraction of sand from the Laja and San DamianĀ rivers.
However,Ā the Attorney General’s Office declared they have only one investigation file, opened by the San Miguel de Allende local authorities (not the CNA).
- Finally, CNA stated that they filed two formal complaints and provided the following investigations file numbers:
AP/PGR/GTO/SMA/1958B/2015 filed before the Public Minsitry of the federation in SMA AP/PGR/GTO/GTO/1877-B/2015 presented at the prosecutor’s office of Guanajuato
The fact is, that after more than a year of this situation, the looting keeps on going, the trucks come and go and neither municipal, state or federal authorities seem to be doing anything about it.
With information from Periodico Correo
