La Calera: Water for Coca-Cola and Bogotá, but Not for its People

This year’s drought inspired processions in La Calera, without waiting for Holy Week. On February 2, a dozen parishioners asked the town priest to lend them the statue of San Isidro Labrador, the saint people pray to for rain, so they could carry it on their shoulders to the diminished waters of Santa Catalina Creek, which supplies the aqueduct in the Buenos Aires Bajo neighborhood, where they live. During that period, the ferocious sun had turned the riverbed into a trickle of water and they saw no other recourse than to accompany a church deacon to the headwaters, where he sprinkled holy water in an attempt to draw more water from the hands of the saint.

The terrible El Niño phenomenon forced them to further restrict the schedule in which their small farms receive water. Under normal conditions, the Buenos Aires Bajo community, which manages its own aqueduct, opens the valves for nine hours a day, from 5:30 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon. This may seem strange to city dwellers accustomed to having water whenever they feel like it, but for the people of Buenos Aires Bajo it is sufficient for bathing, preparing food, planting potatoes, and raising dairy cows. The dry season at the beginning of the year, however, forced them to further ration their water, opening the valves for just 5.5 hours a day.

On their pilgrimage with Saint Isidro Labrador in tow, they weren’t the only ones who were worried; in the neighboring village of Santa Helena, where people are used to water 24 hours a day, not even a drop of water could be had.

Community leader Leandro Santiago hails from Santa Helena, where he makes a living by selling the milk from his four cows. He recalls how the crisis in Santa Helena was even harder because its inhabitants had to come up with the money to purchase water from the municipality’s utility company. The peasant’s eyes widen as he explains the irony: They were forced to buy water drawn from land that, thanks to a community organization built up over 50 years, generally provides them with water for free.

Santiago remembers that while the 250 families in Buenos Aires Bajo and the 172 in Santa Helena, who essentially occupy the same land, were making these spiritual and financial efforts to get the water back, an old neighbor, the Coca-Cola FEMSA bottling plant, never stopped extracting water from the earth to ship and sell bottles of its Manantial (spring, translated into English) water brand throughout the country.

La Calera is experiencing a water crisis in which this, and other even greater paradoxes, seem to be involved and is now a representative case of the debates surrounding water hoarding in Colombia. The municipality of 28,000 inhabitants, neighboring the Chingaza moor and Bogotá, is well known to cyclist for its Alto de Patios and to other visitors for its delicious merengones, while in the shadow of those tourist attractions thousands of inhabitants have grown accustomed to having to search for drinking water.

The ‘Spring’ that is cheap for Coca-Cola

The Manantial plant was built in 1981 and is one of Coca-Cola’s seven bottling plants in Colombia. Like all the others, it extracts industrial quantities of water.

It’s authorized to draw 3.23 liters per second from seven sources, according to the water concession granted to Coca-Cola by the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Cundinamarca (CAR), which expires this year and is in the process of renewal

Since the plant operates 24 hours a day (the work force is divided into eight-hour shifts), Manantial can draw 279,000 liters of water daily from seven authorized sources in the village of Santa Helena, the very village where Leonardo Santiago and his neighbors ran out of water a few months ago and were forced to purchase it. That’s about 101.8 million liters a year, enough to fill 40 Olympic swimming pools.

The number of bottles that leave the plant daily depends on the size. Coca-Cola did not agree to answer that or any other questions for this report, but a source of the company (who asked to remain anonymous) told VORÁGINE that on a day when they bottle only 600-ml bottles, this is the equivalent of more or less 420,000 bottles. 

The number of bottles that leave the plant daily depends on the size. Coca-Cola did not agree to answer that or any other questions for this report, but a company worker (who asked to remain anonymous) told VORÁGINE that on a day when they bottle only 600-ml bottles, this is the equivalent of more or less 420,000 bottles. 

Coca-Cola was maintaining this activity without major setbacks on April 17, when their neighbors in charge of the aqueducts of the three villages in the area sent a desperate letter to the mayor of La Calera, Juan Carlos Hernández, in which they declared an emergency and asked for water in tank trucks: “Many of us have not received a drop of water during the past fifteen days and in some cases much longer (…). Never before has such a serious and complicated water shortage been experienced in our territory.”

The extraction of water in industrial quantities next to communities that have difficulties with their supply is not exclusive to La Calera. In 2021, VORÁGINE investigated the cases of Sesquilé (Cundinamarca) and Caloto (Cauca), where Postobón bottling plants extract hundreds of millions of liters of water per year while in those municipalities water for the people is scarce and dirty.

The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective (CAJAR), an NGO that studied the Postobón case in a report on the conflicts over water generated by the ultra-processed sugary beverage industry, frames it within the phenomenon of “water hoarding”, in which the State does not prioritize consumption of the resource by humans, as ordered by law, and, instead, gives concessions to private companies for mass exploitation. Water then ends up concentrated in few hands. In fact, inequality in the distribution of water in Colombia is greater than inequality in the distribution of land, concluded a study by researchers María Cecilia Roa and Sandra Brown.

CAJAR researcher Yessika Hoyos, a member of the editorial team that issued the Postobón report, told VORÁGINE that, given what the communities in those villages experience, the case of the Manantial plant in La Calera has the characteristics of a case of hoarding.

For Coca-Cola it is also an extremely cheap business compared to its profits. The company does not have to carry out a complex treatment process because the water it extracts is so pure that, as the source of the company consulted says, “almost as soon it enters, it leaves the plant.” This is confirmed by Simón García, leader of the Buenos Aires Alto neighborhood who worked for seven years at the plant and who explains that only minimal sanitary processes are required before bottling it. This purity is highlighted in the slogan “each drop is unique” that appears on the label of bottles such as the 600-ml Manantial bottle, which in La Calera’s main park can be purchased for 3,300 pesos (0,81 USD).

It’s also a very cheap business when you look what Coca-Cola pays to extract the water. The rate of what is known as the Water Use Rate is defined in a mix of charges established by the Ministry of the Environment and each CAR. The CAR of Cundinamarca did not provide VORÁGINE with updated official information on that subject, but it did provide the invoice containing the payment for consumption in 2016. That year, Coca-Cola reported having extracted 56,530 cubic meters (about 56.6 million liters) for which it only paid 607,501 pesos (149 USD).

That was eight years ago. By looking at the most recent rates that the CAR has published on its website, those for 2022, a more current calculation can be made: to extract that same amount of water from La Calera, Coca-Cola would pay about 4.7 million pesos that year (1,154 USD). Meanwhile, in 2022 the company reported income of 226,740,000,000 pesos (USD 55,7 million).

For this reason, the inhabitants of the three surrounding towns (Santa Helena, where the plant is located; Buenos Aires Alto and Buenos Aires Bajo) do not think that Coca- Cola compensates their community for all the water it extracts.

“I don’t really know what Coca-Cola does,” responds peasant leader Leandro Santiago when asked about that company’s environmental compensation policies. Mayor Hernández himself, a community leader from the Alianza Verde political party who came to office on a platform of environmental protection, says that he isn’t clear either, which is why during the first months of his administration he asked the local Ministry of the Environment for a detailed investigation. 

The environmental regulations that govern water concessions such as the one Coca-Cola has in La Calera require the CAR not only to charge for water extraction, but to define the company’s obligations to preserve water. According the CAR, representatives of the multinational have stated in public that: “We must give back to nature 100% of what we extract from it.” However, they did not reply to VORÁGINE’s questions in this regard. In response to a right of petition sent by VORÁGINE, the CAR provided a document in which Coca-Cola reported having planted 3,300 trees in the area and having made an inventory of the animals there.

Local leaders say that it has provided villages with parks, encouraged the collection of plastic bottles in schools, and hired people from the area. Also, if requested in writing, the company provides juices and bottled water for the yearly Farmer’s Day celebrations.

But the community is seeking greater commitment. They would like, for example, to see paved roads connecting rural inhabitants with the urban La Calera area. These are the same roads used daily by the company’s trucks to carry water. García, the former Coca-Cola worker, says: “They respond by saying that they gave some trees (as environmental compensation) for who knows what, but that isn’t enough, given the amount of money they make from our water mine.”

A mine with which, in addition, another company wants to set up a business to do the same as Coca-Cola. And this will affect not only the three villages, but the entire town of La Calera.

Watch the CONTRACORRIENTE episode about this topic:

The Gauze and Bandage Company Now Seeking to Extract Water

Leandro Santiago, who ran out of water at the beginning of the year, can’t understand it: “I practice water preservation. They ask us not to plant less than three meters from the edge of the streams and we comply, we even maintain a wider strip than that. But we never see the people from Coca-Cola; they don’t talk to us directly, and now they say there’s another plant coming. This sends a very bad message.”

Farmers in the area found out in mid-May, after the CAR responded to a right of petition, that a concession was granted in 2021 to a company called Sherleg, to extract and bottle water in the Buenos Aires district. The concession has been granted to extract 1.33 liters per second (almost half of what Coca-Cola is allowed to) and the company is legally represented by Jaime Leguizamón, “a man with a lot of money”, according to the farmers, who bought a farm in the area and, although some people say they have seen him, he remains a ghost to the majority.

The concession, however, seems to have come to a standstill, because as yet, only the Manantial plant continues to operate, which the farmers consider more than enough.

But the greatest concern comes from the fact that the CAR authorized Sherleg to draw water from San Lorenzo Creek, La Calera’s main source. Water from the creek is treated by the local utility company (ESPUCAL) and pumped through its pipelines to 70% of the municipality’s inhabitants. Any situation that reduces its flow will affect the water supply to nearly the entire town.

At the beginning of this year, for example, El Niño phenomenon reduced water levels in San Lorenzo Creek to a minimum, as seen in this photo provided by ESPUCAL. Under normal conditions, the large stones in the photo are covered with running water. The utility company was therefore forced to ration water.

Unlike Coca-Cola, Sherleg is not a recognized brand in the bottled drinks industry. During the past 43 years, it has specialized in the manufacture of medical supplies such as gauze, bandages, plasters, and catheters.

Records in the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce show that its main owner, Jaime Leguizamón, is a 68-year-old man born in Ramiriquí (Boyacá), who together with his wife created the family-owned company in 1981. Today, his sister and three children are also shareholders. The company has grown through contracts with clinics, hospitals, and as a supplier to health giants such as Cruz Verde. The Sherleg website reports an annual gross income of 7 million dollars (about 28,000 million pesos), offices in Colombia, and one office in Miami (United States).

VORÁGINE called the phone numbers on the website (almost all of them were out of service) and left WhatsApp and email messages, but at the closing of this report the company had not responded.

Sherleg’s moves to secure water in La Calera began, as far as VORÁGINE could trace them, in late 2016, when they began buying up the land corresponding to the CAR concession, as stated in the land’s “Certificate of Tradition” (historical record of ownership). According to Chamber of Commerce records, in 2017, Leguizamón bought a bottling company called Aqua Ósmosis that provided Sherleg with the experience they lacked in commercializing treated water.

Soon after, Leguizamón began his proceedings with the CAR, which in 2018 concluded that “the conditions of water availability at this time demonstrate that the water supply from the source (San Lorenzo Creek) could satisfy Sherleg’s needs”, according to the CAR’s response to the farmers’ petition. Three years later, in 2021, Sherleg was awarded the concession, but only now are the people of La Calera being made aware of it.

In fact, the same San Lorenzo Creek, where the CAR approved the new concession to bottle water, already faces a number of challenges in its efforts to meet the municipality’s human needs for consumption, given the current construction boom that has aggravated everything.

The Bucket Regime

Laura Fonseca, an independent worker and community leader from the Flandes Alto neighborhood in La Calera’s urban area, says that “it’s normal to see people carrying buckets to fill up at the water trucks”. The Mayor’s Office sent one truck daily during the drought that affected San Lorenzo Creek at the beginning of the year. Now that it’s raining, they send a truck about every two weeks because there are still problems: the rains cause landslides that damage the pipelines and, again, only air comes out of the taps in people’s homes.

A photo like this, taken and shared on June 17 by the utility company, illustrates the daily challenges of thousands of residents in the municipality.

As La Calera has grown, new areas are finding it difficult to secure water. Laura complains that in neighborhoods like hers, higher up, when the water does come, the pressure is weak. “When I go down into town and turn on a faucet there, it’s frightening to see the amount of pressure,” she says. To get decent water pressure in her sink or shower, she, like most of her neighbors, was forced to buy a motorized pump. The pump helps, but it has driven up her electricity bill.

The Flandes neighborhood, nearly 20 years old, has almost always suffered from a scarce water supply. But, according to Laura, who has also participated in citizens’ environmental task forces, the problems are worse since the frenetic construction of apartment buildings began in the areas around La Calera.

On another hill, about 700 meters from Laura’s neighborhood, lives Alexander Pérez, a recycler who a year ago, after his first month in a rented apartment, had to call the owner because he and his family couldn’t stand “bathing with that trickle” anymore. Alexander lives in the Entrebosques 1 apartments, a 240-unit complex that is barely two years old. The complex, built by the Cusezar construction company, also gets its water from San Lorenzo Creek. Responsibility for the water problems has been shuffled back and forth between administrators, the utility company, and the construction company.

The fact is residents have been frequently forced to get their water from the trucks sent by the Mayor’s Office, as seen in this photo, or secured by the complex’s administration, when their only option has been to purchase water.

Alex, the recycler, works in nine apartment complexes built in the area around La Calera and has identified similar problems in all of them, where people have had to organize protests. Not all of the complexes were built by Cusezar, but he says that this construction company “already owns half the town.” It is an exaggeration that contains an essential truth: This company is the most visible face of a questioned construction boom that has sparked a debate with water at its center, in particular the water in San Lorenzo Creek.

The questions stem from the fact that previous mayors, through the public utility company, approved the construction of new apartment complexes based on water availability that depends on as yet unbuilt water works. Cusezar responds that everything is in order, while Mayor Juan Carlos Hernández says that, according to his advisors, the works should have been approved based on real water availability, not on projections, that “allowed construction companies to process their licenses.”

For this reason, he assures, 1,300 construction points (apartments or houses) have been licensed with no available water.

And because of all these problems with the San Lorenzo Creek water supply, the new concession awarded to bottle the water from that source has those who live with this reality of La Calera on edge. Public utilities advisor Carlos Pinto knows inside out what is happening in La Calera and in municipalities in the Bogotá savanna. He says the decision is “inconvenient and sends a bad message to the community”. The mayor asked the CAR to update the study on which the decision to award the concession was based, taking into account this year’s drought.

When VORÁGINE broke the news to Laura Fonseca, the leader of Flandes Alto, she responded: “I’m devastated,” while Alex, the recycler, accustomed to organizing protests to demand good water service, said: “They can’t do things this way! And if they choose to, we’ll have to protest big time!”

The Greatest Paradox

30% of inhabitants in La Calera still don’t receive water from San Lorenzo Creek. Their water comes from the Bogotá Aqueduct, through what is known as block sale of water, a system in which the Mayor’s Office of La Calera pays the aqueduct for treatment and transportation of water to that part of its population. In this case, the liquid comes from the San Rafael reservoir.

And because they depend on the Bogotá Aqueduct, they have, since April, been subject to the rationing every nine days (currently every 18 days) imposed by the mayor of the country’s capital due to the decrease in the level of the reservoirs.

This is where the water paradox in La Calera becomes greater still, and unique in Colombia.

It’s not just that a Coca-Cola plant sucks hundreds of thousands of liters of water a day, and that the CAR has authorized another bottling company to do the same, while the farmers next door suffer from thirst when there is drought.

La Calera also allowed its territory to be used so that the Bogotá Aqueduct could build essential infrastructure to supply water to the country’s capital. The Francisco Wiesner drinking water treatment plant, the largest in Colombia, and the San Rafael reservoir operate in the municipality. These two enormous engineering works are part of the Chingaza system, which not only provides water to 30% of La Calera, but also, and above all, to 70% of Bogotá and the neighboring towns of Funza, Mosquera, Madrid, Soacha and Cota.

In other words, thanks to works built in La Calera to transport the water that originates in the Chingaza moor, service has been guaranteed for decades to a population that today is between 5 and 6 million people while farmers in the villages and inhabitants of the urban La Calera areas are subject to routine rationing and getting their water supply via tank trucks and buckets.

And official calculations predict that things are about to get worse. The Bogotá Aqueduct made a study in 2022 about the municipalities to which it sells with the block water system. The conclusion is that, in 2030, just six years from now, Bogotá will have the capacity to bring 30 liters of water per second to La Calera, but the areas it supplies in the municipality will require 36 liters per second.

The population of La Calera will require 6 liters per second —double what the Coca-Cola Manantial plant currently consumes— and there will be no way to bring water without building new works to allow it. The Mayor told VORÁGINE that there isn’t enough money to undertake the works, and the Bogotá Aqueduct says in their document that it won’t build them either.

* This content is funded by support provided, in part, by Vital Strategies. Content is editorially independent and its purpose is to shine a light on both the food and beverage industry illegal or unethical practices and the Colombian most vulnerable populations, who disproportionately bear the brunt of the global health crisis resulting from the unhealthy food and beverages consumption. Unless otherwise stated, all statements and materials posted on this article, including any statements regarding specific legislation, reflect the views of the individual contributors and not those of Vital Strategies.