Colombian authorities announced Monday that a Coca-Cola company is the target of an administrative investigation for water captured during periods of drought in a municipality near Bogota, as the Swiss newspaper Le Matin reports. The American beverage giant was recently cited in a press investigation, according to which the Manantial brand (owned by Cola-Cola) would withdraw thousands of liters of water “without restriction” in La Calera, a town near Bogota, in the mountains overlooking the capital. Millions of residents in and around Bogota have suffered periodic water cuts since April due to low water reserves and lack of rainfall.
Priority use must be human consumption
The Autonomous Corporation of Cundinamarca (CAR), a regional environmental authority, announced on Monday that it would verify these press reports. Alfred Ballesteros, director of the CAR, said on a local radio station:
“The regulation clearly states that the priority use must be human consumption and not industrial activities. As an environmental authority, our priority is that people have access to clean water and we cannot prioritize private use over use for communities.”
On August 11, the Voragine news portal reported that Manantial, one of seven Coca-Cola bottling companies in Colombia, was extracting more than 279,000 liters of water per day from a river in La Calera , in the midst of a drought emergency. The American multinational did not comment publicly on this article, which notably cited local farmers affected by the drought.
The CAR will carry out a “hydrological study”, “to understand water supply […] demand and, on this basis, determine whether there is sufficient water, first for the communities and then for d “other uses,” added its director.Manantial has had a license authorizing it to extract 3.23 liters of water per second in La Calera since 1981.
