Over the past four years, I've extensively explored and documented border towns between Mexico and the United States. In some of these communities, I have encountered poignant, newly created structures resembling gas stations that instead sell potable water specifically to migrant workers laboring in irrigated fields.
Further research has revealed that these facilities are the first of their kind. The company Aqua2000 foresees significant growth in the near future. I find these structures to embody something sublime. With garish Pop Art colors and slick facades, they advertise for a global future in which water, like gasoline, is bought and sold beyond municipalities, global markets, and the convenience of bottled water, but on a broad daily scale. Will these water “filling stations” one day rival the ubiquity of fast-food chains?