This paper reports on an evaluation of the management and performance of water utilities in the municipalities of Saltillo, Coahuila, and Hermosillo, Sonora, during the 2001-2015 period. The institutional capacity approach was used to analyze the political, administrative, and human resources management factors of both organizations and to compare their management outcomes. Our analysis indicated that the Saltillo organism has higher institutional capacity and has obtained better results than the Hermosillo organism. This study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that lead to effective practices among urban drinking water management organizations. These factors were found to be increased management autonomy, increased measurement coverage, indexation of rates, and staff training. The approach used during the study allowed for the identification of opportunity areas in both organizations, and it can be applied to the assessment of other organizations in the sector.

This paper describes the formulation of the decision agenda of “Río Sonora” Trust (FRS)’s Technical Committee (TC), established in 2014 to compensate for the damage caused by Buenavista del Cobre Company’s copper leach spill in the Sonora River Basin. The Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) (Kingdon, 2014) was used to analyze the participation and criteria for technical feasibility and the anticipation of future limitations of the alternatives discussed by the FRS’ Technical Committee. The analysis showed that the approved alternatives were formulated and implemented by hidden participants and characterized by their high visibility, low compliance with the technical feasibility criteria, and long-term costs aversion. The results contribute to the understanding of the MSA virtues for the analysis of the remediation of environmental disasters agenda.