Geological Prestudies for the Development of New Ground Water Resources for the Water Supply of Monterrey in Sierra Higueras, Nuevo León, NE-Mexico

Located some 40 km northeast of the city of Monterrey, the Sierra Higueras represents one of the most outstanding morphological features within the foreland of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Due to an increasing demand for water resources for the water supply of the metropolitan area of Monterrey and a growing industry in the state of Nuevo Ledn, the federal water supply agency of Monterrey (Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey) is steadily seeking new groundwater exploitation sites. The first detailed geological mapping of parts of the Sierra Higueras in a scale of 1:10 000 provides a basis for future hydrogeological investigations. Recent information about lithology and the system of joints, faults, and fissures help to locate potential groundwater resource

Consolidating the water industry: an analysis of the potential gains from horizontal integration in a conditional efficiency framework

The German potable water supply industry is regarded highly fragmented, thus preventing efficiency improvements that could happen through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we use a cross-section sample of 364 German water utilities in 2006, applying Data Envelopment Analysis, to analyze the potential efficiency gains from hypothetical mergers between water utilities at the county level. A conditional efficiency framework is applied to account for the water utilities' operating environments. A conditional order-m approach is applied for the detection of potential outlying observations. Merger gains are decomposed into a technical efficiency effect, a harmony effect and a scale effect. The greatest efficiency improvement potentials turn out to result from reducing individual inefficiencies while pure merger gains are found to be low. The results suggest improving incentives for efficient operations in water supply and a consolidation of the smallest water utilities.The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11123-014-0407-x // This publication was produced as part of the GRASP project, funded by the European Commission through the 7th Framework Programme under contract no. 244725