The Querétaro state government, led by Mauricio Kuri González, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), paid 526,900,523.30 pesos for a project called “Storage and Sanitation Infrastructure Solution for Paseo 5 de Febrero.”
It involved a pumping station that the government billed as “a monumental project to store the equivalent of two thousand tankers of water,” which they claimed would prevent any problems from occurring due to the rains.
“It is fully designed so that we don’t have any problems during the rainy season,” assured the then Secretary of Urban Development and Public Works, Fernando González Salinas, before representatives of the 60th Querétaro Legislature.
“The recovery period we’re going to have there will be six hours. That is, this reservoir will be full, and we’ll be able to pump water out in six hours, because we have seven pumps that will be active throughout the entire period: three for each of the two sumps and one backup pump for each of the two,” he added.
However, the rains on the night of Thursday, July 3, revealed that the sump was inoperable, as the government had to use gasoline pumps to extract water from the sump.
Personnel from Civil Protection, Public Works, and the company that built the sump (Pavements and Urbanizations of Querétaro, Puqsa) were on site.
Some personnel were watching the water overflowing from the sump and falling into the already flooded underpass of San Diego Avenue.
Members of the Querétaro State Civil Protection Coordination lifted the grates of the sump cistern and inserted hoses to begin pumping out the water, which they did beginning in the early hours of Friday, July 4.
Civil Protection personnel use pumps to extract the water that flooded the Paseo 5 de Febrero overpass in Querétaro, following the rains on Thursday, July 3, 2025. Photo: Special.
They also pumped out the water from the San Diego Avenue overpass.
After about ten hours, at 10:00 a.m., they continued to expel water and even caused puddles in San Diego, the road where they were dumping it.
This isn’t the first time.
On June 2, after another Paseo 5 de Febrero overpass flooded, Governor Mauricio Kuri González acknowledged that a sump had failed, but assured that his staff would be “on the ballpark” to prevent it from happening again.
“They were right about the sump, which they didn’t check a little bit earlier… I’m on the fence about it, and right now we’re on the ballpark to prevent it from happening again and to ensure that the sumps are working.”
On July 7, at his “Contigo Informamos” conference, four days after the sump collapse, the governor said that a “small” change would have to be made, which he attributed to a project failure.
“In the meeting we had, they told us that one of the pumps was at a low level and that the pump could be raised. It’s more of a project failure than a construction failure. A small change needs to be made there, which they’ll be doing in the coming days. It’s a very minor issue, I believe, and the truth is that we’ll gradually find out where the problems lie.”
The governor also said that the damage to Paseo 5 de Febrero “is getting smaller,” recalling the condition of that road before it was remodeled by his administration, especially when it rained.
Meanwhile, on July 4, the head of the State Civil Protection Coordination, Javier Amaya Torres, justified the failure of the pump sump by the accumulation of nearly 95 millimeters of rainwater “in a very short time and in a specific area.”
However, after the pump sump was completed, damage occurred in the area. On Saturday, February 17, 2024, construction personnel and the State Infrastructure Commission pumped water out of the underpass connecting Epigmenio González Avenue with Paseo 5 de Febrero.
On Saturday, September 14, 2024, Civil Protection personnel had to close the San Diego Avenue overpass due to water accumulation, right where the sump is located.
Now, after the collapse of the sump due to the rain on July 3, authorities also blamed the garbage thrown away by residents.
Amaya Torres reported that nearly 75% of the flooding in the Querétaro metropolitan area is due to accumulated garbage. She said that after Thursday’s rain, they had collected 4 tons of waste in the area, which covers four Querétaro municipalities (Corregidora, El Marqués, Huimilpan, and Querétaro), which is also a similar amount to what a garbage truck can carry.
However, images shown by the Querétaro State Civil Protection Coordination of a flooded overpass on Paseo 5 de Febrero show a few piles of leaves, branches, plastic containers, wrappers, and bags. In this regard, citizens questioned the story that the flooding was caused by garbage.
In an interview during construction in October 2022, the director of the company Pavimentos y Urbanizaciones de Querétaro, Álvaro Jesús Haces de Villa, stated that with the underground stormwater infrastructure—partly connected to the pumping sump—there would be no further damage. “No matter how it rains, it can’t flood up there.”
Source: proceso
