The drought in North Mexico means taps are dry in the city of Monterrey so pipas, primarily run by the city authority, are the only way to deliver water to homes and businesses. As people who cannot afford bottled water are drinking the brackish water from the trucks, anger is growing here that beverage companies with bottling plants here, including Coca Cola and Heineken, are extracting billions of litres of water from public reservoirs.

Several brewers and soft drinks companies have factories in the city, and these use nearly 90bn litres a year in total, and over half of that – nearly 50bn litres a year (or 50m cubic metres) – is water from public reservoirs