Gustavo Petro defended a proposal to desalinate seawater and pump it to Santa Marta from the north of the city using solar energy and batteries. He said that the supply would complement the water arriving by gravity from the Sierra Nevada, which, according to him, was no longer sufficient, and accused Abelardo of opposing the project as a megadrought was approaching. He also claimed that the proposal would bring drinking water to the northern Caribbean coast and questioned why the project was destroyed just as the installation was about to begin, without proposing an alternative. Petro compared Abelardo to Peñalosa and stated that the latter had replaced an underground metro with an elevated one, which, as he wrote, did not reduce average travel times and cost USD 7 billion to the Colombian people. He added that Bogotá had lost 12 years and continued to suffer from traffic jams, linking the project to the devaluation of developments in the northern savannah. In addition, he questioned the Sierra Azul mining concession, which, according to Petro, would extract copper and silver for Abelardo's foreign allies and affect the water of the Rancherías river and lands intended for food production. He argued that the priority should be to invest in drinking water for the northern Caribbean and accused Abelardo of depriving Santa Marta of water while he had never lacked it in his home in Florida, where Petro also associated him with Marcos and people he described as drug traffickers. He concluded by labeling those responsible as "professional scammers." #AguaPotable #SantaMarta #Desalinizacion (translated)
