Assessing Industrial Impact on Water Sustainability in El Bajío, Guanajuato State, Mexico

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing the suggestions made. Congratulations again on an interesting, important and well researched work. Good luck with your publication and in promoting its real-world impact.

Author Response

Thank you for addressing the suggestions made. Congratulations again on an interesting, important and well researched work. Good luck with your publication and in promoting its real-world impact.

We want to thank your words and your encouragement to our work

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the new version of the article. I like the changes that you did from the previous version. I just have some minor comments.

Overall, I would suggest you avoid paragraphs of two lines. Try to combine the sentences into more

integrated paragraphs. For example, paragraph 2 and 3 of subsection 2.1 can be easily combined. Please check these situations in your document.

Also please align how you mention the source of the Tables. On page 14 one table says Authors’ elaboration and the other own elaboration.

I think that by removing all the large tables and by sending them to additional material, it is easier to read the document. When I see your criteria in Table 3 (Hydrological, Environmental, Social and Economic) I see that there is no clear reference to governance aspects. I mention this because actually you start the conclusion and in the first paragraph you state “Therefore, the current situation of scarcity and overexploitation of water sources is a consequence of the decisions made by different government officials over the years”. Yet you barely mention governmental factors in the document. In this regard, I suggest that either you integrate this into your analysis or you write that this is a limitation of the study but you still acknowledge the relevance of the governance context/governmental actors. 

Hence, I suggest you this article, which I think can be very useful:

 https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MRR-02-2018-0056/full/html

In the same line, I think that it would increase the value of the article and could attract more readers if in the conclusion section you connect your conclusions beyond the cases of study. For example how this study can benefit or be benefited from the circular economy literature, which is a very relevant topic nowadays with water in the industry.

Here is a literature review on the topic:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620355384

Best regards,

Author Response

Dear authors,

Thank you for the new version of the article. I like the changes that you did from the previous version. I just have some minor comments.

Overall, I would suggest you avoid paragraphs of two lines. Try to combine the sentences into more integrated paragraphs. For example, paragraph 2 and 3 of subsection 2.1 can be easily combined. Please check these situations in your document.

We followed your suggestion.

Also please align how you mention the source of the Tables. On page 14 one table says Authors’ elaboration and the other own elaboration.

 We corrected the source of our tables

I think that by removing all the large tables and by sending them to additional material, it is easier to read the document. When I see your criteria in Table 3 (Hydrological, Environmental, Social and Economic) I see that there is no clear reference to governance aspects. I mention this because actually you start the conclusion and in the first paragraph you state “Therefore, the current situation of scarcity and overexploitation of water sources is a consequence of the decisions made by different government officials over the years”. Yet you barely mention governmental factors in the document. In this regard, I suggest that either you integrate this into your analysis or you write that this is a limitation of the study but you still acknowledge the relevance of the governance context/governmental actors. 

We want to thank your suggestion. And actually, we really appreciate you mentioned it. Even when governance is not directly expressed in this work, we recognize that many of the issues involved in this study are consequences of decision-making processes, mainly fail decision-making processes.

Hence, I suggest you this article, which I think can be very useful:

 https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MRR-02-2018-0056/full/html

We appreciate your suggestion and it was included in our work to remark your last suggestion.

In the same line, I think that it would increase the value of the article and could attract more readers if in the conclusion section you connect your conclusions beyond the cases of study. For example how this study can benefit or be benefited from the circular economy literature, which is a very relevant topic nowadays with water in the industry.

Here is a literature review on the topic:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620355384

We really appreciate your suggestions, besides the mention of governance. We strongly believe that those topics can be developed in a next paper. And now we are working on it. 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

• The abstract must contain the practical implications of the results found and the added value (novelty) of this study. You must also have clearly identified the sample used.
• The introduction needs to be improved: Why this topic is important?; What is the objective of your article?; What are the research questions in your article?; What is the added value of this study?
• There is no literature review This should include studies from journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus and include the hypotheses formulated for this study.
• Methodology: justify its use in this study and refer the authors with the application of the similar methodology in other studies. Sample description, detailed description of the variables linked to the review of studies by other authors that use the same variables.
• The results and discussion section (which does not exist) has to be deepened and articulated with the results found in other studies referred to in the literature review. Show confirmation or rejection of the formulated hypotheses.
• References must be updated and deepened. Very few studies have been analyzed and are very old.

Author Response

The abstract must contain the practical implications of the results found and the added value (novelty) of this study. You must also have clearly identified the sample used.

We pointed the novelty of our study based on the calculation of the index proposed and the necessity to use it in decision-making to encourage water sustainability. We mentioned in the introduction section that all data used is contained in both appendixes.

In page 2, was added the next information

The introduction needs to be improved: Why this topic is important?; What is the objective of your article?; What are the research questions in your article?; What is the added value of this study?

We modified the introduction section to remark the aspects you suggested.

There is no literature review. This should include studies from journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus and include the hypotheses formulated for this study.

The hypothesis of our work is described in the introduction section.

Methodology: justify its use in this study and refer the authors with the application of the similar methodology in other studies. Sample description, detailed description of the variables linked to the review of studies by other authors that use the same variables.

Now, you can find a literature review included in section 2 Materials and methods. An explanation of the sample used is described in the introduction section, page 2.

The description of the variables is described in section 3 Application of methodologies, as this is a completion of a previous study, and we must consider the same variables in order to complete it. You can find a descrption complete of those variables in reference 29, because this paper takes as base the parameters and fundamentation those data and information showed in that reference.

All data used is included in appendixes 1 and 2.

The results and discussion section (which does not exist) has to be deepened and articulated with the results found in other studies referred to in the literature review. Show confirmation or rejection of the formulated hypotheses.

A short discussion has been included taking as reference the data and results made known by four different state governments for the environmental, social, water and economic aspects considered in this work. In this way, the information is contrasted and it can be discerned if the policies and actions carried out by the governments have had positive results in addressing the problems indicated in this article, pages 15 and 16.

References must be updated and deepened. Very few studies have been analyzed and are very old.

We included a better review of the literature and many of the papers we analyzed were published in 2021.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors carried out the requested revisions.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations on a very thorough and interesting analysis. The paper is quite complex for the average reader - I have made some suggestions regarding the Conclusions section. My main comment overall is that there is an opportunity to do more with this work by making specific recommendations for how what policy makers could have done differently in the past, or now, to achieve their stated objectives. In the attached file I have also identified some areas where the language can be improved. If this is important to the journal I suggest just passing the paper through a grammar checker. Good luck with finalizing the paper and I hope it has impact in the future. Best wishes.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Congratulations on a very thorough and interesting analysis. The paper is quite complex for the average reader - I have made some suggestions regarding the Conclusions section. My main comment overall is that there is an opportunity to do more with this work by making specific recommendations for how what policy makers could have done differently in the past, or now, to achieve their stated objectives. In the attached file I have also identified some areas where the language can be improved. If this is important to the journal I suggest just passing the paper through a grammar checker. Good luck with finalizing the paper and I hope it has impact in the future. Best wishes.

We really appreciate all comments and recommendations.

According to your comments on the pdf:

- All parenthesis were deleted in the references:

- In page 2, line 65, it was changed the expression “Hierarchical Process Analysis” for “Analytic Hierarchy Process”,the acronym AHP is the correct and do not change.

- In page 4, paragraph 6, the expression

“In order to determine to what extent are the initial goals from being accomplished when the companies were first allowed to settle in the municipalities in question, we used FL to assign values close to 1 when a goal is near to being achieved.”

It was changed by:

“Thus, to determine if the objectives proposed by the state government were achieved when it allowed companies to be established in the municipalities analyzed, this study use the FL as a form of evaluation, with a value of 1 when the objectives have been achieved and 0 otherwise.”

- In page 4, paragraph 8 was separated in two sentences.

- Page 5, Scheme 1, it was changed to “Figure 2”: Is the impact of wastewater on downstream environments and communities picked up in any of these criteria/sub-criteria? Similarly, what about the impacts of the industries on air quality and other forms of pollution? Impact of industry on job availability, is there a net increase in jobs? or is it only focusing on more direct water related aspects?

No exactly, the wastewater was considered within sub-criterion “Treatment of water” in table 3, but only like a volume of water that can be potentially reused. This volume was obtained just to municipality level. The data of wastewater and treatment of water realized by industries is not available.

Now, the region of El Bajío has problems of contamination in most water sources in general, clear clue of inappropriate management realized with wastewater generated by all sectors in the region. In this case, we did not consider the industrial impact of the different forms of pollution.

We analyzed the impact of the industry on job availability; in fact, it is indirectly included in sub-criterion “Per capita income”. Where short variability in the percentage of people with the different income ranks through years, make us think that the generation of jobs has been below the needs of EAP in the region.

This study is focused mainly on water aspects because the official discourse to encourage these activities has emphasized economic and social benefits for the inhabitants, the decrease in the use of water volumes, and the consequent improvement of water sources. Nevertheless, our results show that the benefits claimed by governmental policies are not being achieved.

- Page 6, line 236

- Page 6, line 238

- Page 24, line 485

The table number was changed of Table 7 to Table 5. All table numbers were corrected and aligned with the text.

The section “Conclusions” was renamed as “Discussion and conclusions”.

The first paragraph was moved to the second place to include this new paragraph:

“The region of El Bajío has been affected by problems of water management for many years, due to the prevalence of economic and political interests above opinion and recommendations of hydrological experts along time. Therefore, the current situation of scarcity and overexploitation of water sources is a consequence of the decisions made by different government officials over the years.”

- Page 25, line 538, “Table 8” was changed to “Table 6”.

- Page 26

Five paragraphs were added at end of page, related with the conclusions about the application of the AHP and FL methodologies, and the significance of Global industrial impact index.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I found your article very interesting and an important contribution for Mexican water studies. You have carried out a very comprehensive study. Although in general I agree with your study, I think there are some aspects that still require some attention. I understand that sometimes is very difficult to obtain accurate data and therefore some assumptions are needed. I think some of the assumptions can be challenged or contested. You will find some of my comments in this regard below. Also, due to the nature of your study I think it would be very important that in the methodology section you explain in further detail the strengths and weaknesses of your methodology and compare it with others. This will help the reader to have a better understanding of your contribution. I hope you find my comments below useful.

Minor comments

Delete the parenthesis in the references

Line 40 is missing the word “rivers”

In line 65 when you refer to AHP, I would suggest you adding a reference there.

Page 6 line 212 should say if a month

In page 9 lines 352-355 you should add a reference to know where you are obtaining the percentages from.

In page 9 line 387, you are calculating an adoption of 10%. Personally, I think it is high, can you elaborate further what is the criteria for such assumption.

I think you can send Table 3 to the Appendix and just create a simplified table with summarized results.

Major comments

In the Methodology you make a nice description of the method you are using but I think you are missing mentioning other methods that could be used. It is important that you contrast your method with other possible methods to demonstrate why the method you have chosen is the most appropriate. You should also include its limitations. I consider there are various assumptions and due to the complexity of the topic it is difficult to include all the variables.

In page 26 line 567 you mention the relevance of El Zapotillo for Leon. Although you mention that the value only be maintained if the project is carried out, you are still assuming that this will happen. I believe there is still a lot of debate about this project. Is not more realistic not to assume the project and then state that if the project is carried out then the value will be higher?

You also mention in the paragraph of line 573 about the development policy of the municipalities to attract more industries. I think it would interesting to mention that at the same time the municipalities also can compete against each other to attract companies.

Author Response

We really appreciate all comments and recommendations.

Minor comments

-Delete the parenthesis in the references

All parentheses were deleted.

- Line 40 is missing the word “rivers”

The word “rivers” was added

- In line 65 when you refer to AHP, I would suggest you adding a reference there.

The reference to AHP was added

- Page 6 line 212 should say if a month

It was corrected

- In page 9 lines 352-355 you should add a reference to know where you are obtaining the percentages from.

We added the reference

- In page 9 line 387, you are calculating an adoption of 10%. Personally, I think it is high, can you elaborate further what is the criteria for such assumption.

This percentage is based in a previous work, which used higher values and we add it to References. We consider that 10% is a good reference to do easier the understanding of possibilities of application of this option.

The original paragraph:

CONAGUA has developed technical guidelines to build systems for rainwater harvesting for domestic purposes [6]. In this case, the calculation was made thinking that only 10% of the houses in the municipalities of study will adopt this technology, and based on this assumption, our diffuse ranks were computed, being that if 100% of houses implemented this alternative, all values relative to the contribution of this method would increase tenfold.

It was changed to:

CONAGUA has developed technical guidelines to build systems for rainwater harvesting for domestic purposes [6]. In this case, taking as a reference [41], the calcu-lation is considering that only 10% of the houses in the municipalities of study will adopt this technology. Our diffuse ranks were computed, if 100% of houses implement this alternative, all values relative to the contribution of this method would increase tenfold.

- I think you can send Table 3 to the Appendix and just create a simplified table with summarized results.

It could be a good option, but the intention of puting whole data in the same table is to show all elements and considerations we used to get the results in every parameter. We do not need to change pages to compare the different tables to understand them.

Major comments

- In the Methodology you make a nice description of the method you are using but I think you are missing mentioning other methods that could be used. It is important that you contrast your method with other possible methods to demonstrate why the method you have chosen is the most appropriate. You should also include its limitations. I consider there are various assumptions and due to the complexity of the topic it is difficult to include all the variables.

In page 3, it was added the next paragraph:

“Currently, there are methodologies as TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations), and others. However, these are based in AHP, which was the first methodology of this type created, is relatively easy to use. It does not need complicated informatics programs to analyze the information.”

- In page 26 line 567 you mention the relevance of El Zapotillo for Leon. Although you mention that the value only be maintained if the project is carried out, you are still assuming that this will happen. I believe there is still a lot of debate about this project. Is not more realistic not to assume the project and then state that if the project is carried out then the value will be higher?

El Zapotillo has social, environmental, and political issues. Even when we believe that the project may not be finished in a short time, it has not been officially canceled. For our study, we decided to consider the project to calculate the highest possible value. Otherwise, we have as a reference the rest of the municipalities to compare.

- You also mention in the paragraph of line 573 about the development policy of the municipalities to attract more industries. I think it would interesting to mention that at the same time the municipalities also can compete against each other to attract companies.

We totaliy agree with you, In page 26 the penultimate paragraph mentioned the competence between municipalities:

“In addition, it is necessary to mention the competition between municipalities of the region to attract these companies. Political benefits are privileged over the environment and population.”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments:

General comments:

Overall, the concept of the research is good but the way the authors are trying to portray is not scientific enough for journal publication. The methodology (AHP and Fuzzy AHP) is not clearly stated. Results of the research are not well documented. From the results of the research, the authors fail to tell which factor is the governing factor that is responsible for unsustainability of water resources in the study area. Conclusion of the research focus on the results from AHP while in methodology the authors are telling the use of Fuzzy AHP. The manuscript has too many paragraphs and most of the paragraph is composed of single or two sentences. The sentences are too long.

Abstract: The abstract is not well written. Conclusion of the research is not clearly mentioned

L19-20: Is this the result from the current study? Your study is carried out at municipalities level while this result talks about the global impact

L22-23: keywords are not in alphabetical order. Please try to keep alphabetically

L34-36: This sentence is too long and it’s not clear what the sentence wants to tell. Better to split the sentence

L40: This is not the style of citation the journal expects. [1,34] citation means 1 and 34 or 1-34. In between citations are missing.

L43: important or major?

L46: what does some refer to?

L55: please state the time span. It’s unclear what type of time span are you refering to decadal or annual or time range for example 1990-2015, since 2000.

L68: citation is required (Eg. Decision making with the analytic hierarchy process by Prof Thomas Satty)

L92: Citation is not appropriate with the text

Scheme 1:

Drought is a phenomenon caused by the variations in the rainfall amount. Is it required to consider both precipitation and drought?

The clarity on the consideration of sub criteria in each group is not well stated. Precipitation is a part of hydrological system and not considered under hydrological aspect. Since the authors are trying to see the impact of industry, industrial components such as waste disposal in water sources could be considered. Does ways of communication have impact on water consumption or water use? In environmental aspect land use and land cover could be considered as it has direct impact on the groundwater recharge.

How “change use of soil” correspond to economic aspect on sustainability of water  

resources

L159: what is scheme? why not figure?

L439: Is this graph or table? what does x-axis refers to?

L441: This citation does not refer to any R packages regarding Fuzzy AHP

L452: Please elaborate the meaning of the table caption and provide necessary column heading

L476: What is original research?

L488: where is Table 8?

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I am pleased you took into account my comments. Just my last recommendation is that if the article is accepted by the other reviewers, during the proofreading try to make some editions to the sentence you added in page 2: "However, these are based in AHP..." I think it requires some minor editions to be clearer.

Best regards,

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have somehow made a response to the specific comments but still fail to provide response to general comments. Authors are still not able to tell the scientific importance of the research carried out. Even though Table 3 is the most important result of the research, presentation of the table is not good enough to understand the result which authors are still fail to improve. Still the manuscript has too many paragraphs which is unpleasant for scientific publications.