Mexico City may be just months away from running of out water
Mexico City may be just months away from running of out water
The metropolis of nearly 22 million people is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography and leaks — are compounded by climate change.
Alejandro Gomez has been without proper running water for more than three months. Sometimes it comes on for an hour or two, but only a small trickle, barely enough to fill a couple of buckets. Then nothing for many days.
Gomez, who lives in Mexico City’s Tlalpan district, doesn’t have a big storage tank so can’t get water truck deliveries — there’s simply nowhere to store it. Instead, he and his family eke out what they can buy and store.
When they wash themselves, they capture the runoff to flush the toilet. It’s hard, he told CNN. “We need water, it’s essential for everything.”
Water shortages are not uncommon in this neighborhood, but this time feels different, Gomez said. “Right now, we are getting this hot weather. It’s even worse, things are more complicated.”
As someone who until reading this was almost totally ignorant about the status quo in Mexico City (other than secondary school lessons in 90s on the 1985 earth quake) I am aghast at their situation. Those poor people.
15Find out stage approaching really fast.
3Well that's the end of wild axolotls too it sounds like
3What is "out water"???
1Not trying to be rude but there's no way to say this without it being.
Next time don't build your capital city in the water supply. Next to the lake tends to work a lot better
-15Not sure if you're aware of the city's colonial history. An example from the article:
The Aztecs chose this spot to build their city of Tenochtitlan in 1325, when it was a series of lakes. They built on an island, expanding the city outwards, constructing networks of canals and bridges to work with the water.
But when the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they tore down much of the city, drained the lakebed, filled in canals and ripped out forests. They saw “water as an enemy to overcome for the city to thrive,” said Jose Alfredo Ramirez, an architect and co-director of Groundlab, a design and policy research organization.
Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.
30That's all true, but that was hundreds of years ago. Corruption, mismanagement and climate change are the drivers now.
Ultimately the commentor's comment regarding "don't build your city" also applies to the Spanish who did...all that building.
3
Mexico City is built on tenotitchlan the capital of the Aztec empire. It’s not like someone just decided one day to start a city out of no where. It’s been there for at least 700 years
8I can't tell if you're joking.
"According to legend, they were told by one of their gods to settle where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus, eating a snake. After a hundred years of wandering, they finally found this sign. They saw the eagle, the cactus, and the snake on a small reed-covered island in the shallow waters of Lake Texcoco."
-17