When Jesús Solís noticed the waters of the reservoir where he had spent his entire life beginning to darken and a rotten odor taking hold, he was overcome with fear. Within weeks those initial concerns were confirmed as tens of thousands of dead fish floated to the surface, apparent victims of a spill of tequila distilling waste into a western Mexico water source.
The 44-year-old fisherman watched for days as the fish he had helped raise and that he relied on for income went belly up along the shores of the San Onofre reservoir in Jalisco state.
Authorities determined that millions of liters of a residue known as vinasse created in tequila’s distillation spilled into the Las Animas creek that flows into the reservoir. Jalisco is the heart of Mexico’s tequila industry. Some 40% of the state’s industrially cultivated land is covered in the blue agave used to make tequila.
The environmental disaster has shaken the residents of Ayotlan, who fear the contaminated waters could pose a threat to their crops and devastate their local fishing cooperative whose families have lost their aquaculture investment and been . . .
