President Andrés Manuel López Obrador spent Friday and Saturday visiting 4 municipalities in México State the place work is underway to create a 14,000-hectare pure reserve on the location of the previous Lake Texcoco.
México state Governor Delfina Gómez accompanied AMLO on his tour of Tecámac, Ecatepec, Chimalhuacán and Texcoco, the place he made a speech celebrating progress on the huge ecological challenge.
“Right this moment we evaluated progress within the restoration of Lake Texcoco,” AMLO stated in an announcement on social media. “Wetlands, rivers, chicken lagoons and lands comprising greater than 14,000 hectares have already change into pure protected areas.”
Info from the Nationwide Water Fee signifies that the park is now 77% full, has price 4.9 billion pesos (US $280 million) and generated 6,100 jobs. It’s anticipated to open in 2024.
Through the tour, AMLO introduced one other addition to the Lake Texcoco challenge – a brand new college for medical college students –often called the Benito Juárez García Universities for Nicely-Being (UBBJ) – that may type a part of his administration’s instructional initiative.
The UBBJ are public greater schooling institutes, usually situated in marginalized areas the place there are few tertiary schooling choices. The brand new medical college would be the second college campus in Texcoco, alongside an current civil engineering college
Apart from the brand new college, AMLO stated that the park would come with sports activities fields for soccer, American soccer, baseball, basketball and the pre-Columbian ball sport “pelota”; a skatepark; recreation areas; strolling circuits; sustainable gardens and agricultural areas; a restaurant; workplaces and scientific analysis areas.
The principle part of the challenge, nevertheless, is the restoration of 4 water our bodies that after fashioned a part of the big lake that crammed the Valley of Mexico, however have been drained or dried out over the centuries following the Spanish conquest: Lake Nabor Carrillo; the Xalapango and North Texcoco Lagoons; the San Juan Ciénaga and Lake Texcoco. Historic wetlands and forests can even be restored.
The federal government predicts that this may generate a variety of environmental advantages, together with higher regulation of water assets within the severely water-stressed Valley of Mexico, in addition to well being advantages for the native inhabitants.
The Lake Texcoco Ecological Park was initially designed by architect Iñaki Echeverría in 2010, however was sidelined 4 years later by former president Enrique Peña Nieto, who deliberate to construct a brand new airport on the location at a projected price of 169 billion pesos (US $9.6 billion) as a substitute.
Whereas operating for workplace in 2018, AMLO claimed that the complete price of the airport might attain 285 billion pesos (US $16.2 billion) and campaigned to scrap the challenge and broaden the present Santa Lucía Navy Air Base in close by Zumpango.
In October of that 12 months, a controversial referendum – during which lower than 1% of eligible voters participated – backed AMLO plan. The Santa Lucía air base turned the brand new Felipe Ángeles Worldwide Airport (AIFA), whereas the location of President Peña Nieto’s deliberate airport was given over to the “hydrological and social restoration of Lake Texcoco.”
With experiences from La Jornada and Infobae
