North American Development Bank highlights proposals to modernize water and wastewater management in border cities during 4th World Water Forum

(Mexico City)- “Modernizing water and wastewater management policies in Mexican border cities depends on the political will to achieve efficient and effective administration of municipal utilities,” commented Jorge C. Garcés, Managing Director of the North American Development Bank (NADB) during his presentation at the 4th World Water Forum.

NADB participated in the 4th World Water Forum, “Local Actions for a Global Challenge,” that is being held in Mexico City from March 16-22, 2006.  Jorge Garcés and Mauricio González, NADB Associate Director of Technical Assistance, spoke on the topics of “Public Policies for Water and Sanitation Services” and “Challenges in Municipal Decentralization of Water Services”, respectively.

During their presentations the NADB officials summarized the Bank’s participation in Mexican border communities, as well as discussed the challenges that local authorities face in accessing funding to develop their infrastructure projects. NADB recently expanded its geographic jurisdiction to work with towns located up to 300 kilometers from the U.S. border.

In Mexico, NADB serves a total of 213 communities in the six states that share a border with the United States, in an area covering approximately 1 million km² and home to 14 million people who lack adequate water and wastewater services. As an example, 2.9 million residents do not have access to sewer services.

The challenges these cities must address include achieving autonomous management of their utility services with state cooperation, establishing fair user fees for the services provided, and separating the function of utility management from that of municipal president or mayor, since the shortness of municipal terms of office leads to a lack of continuity in priority projects initiated from one term to the next.

“We believe that having a city manager whose tenure does not depend on the term of office of the City Council will allow for continuity in project management,” noted Mr. González. “Efficiency and effectiveness in the management of municipal utilities entail reorganizing the structure, administration and operation of local governments.”

For his part Mr. Garcés stated that “at the NADB we work to strengthen and build creditworthiness so that utilities and municipal governments become self-sufficient.” In this way they can obtain greater access to debt resources that will allow then to move forward with the implementation of infrastructure projects in the water and wastewater sector.

To date, NADB is providing US$704 million in loans and grants to support the implementation of 90 environmental infrastructure projects in communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.  The total estimated cost of these projects is U$2.3 billion.

There are currently 10 loan proposals totaling approximately US$100 million pending approval by the NADB Board of Directors for projects in Mexico.

The North American Development Bank, created under the auspices of NAFTA, is a financial institution established and capitalized in equal parts by the United States and Mexico for the purpose of financing environmental infrastructure projects along their common border.  As a pioneer institution in its field, the Bank is working to develop integrated, sustainable and fiscally responsible projects with broad community support in a framework of close cooperation and coordination between Mexico and the United States.

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