Water management
Mexico city is in the news; a good article from 2020 about running out of water
Seeing the headlines about Mexico City at risk of running out of water
‘Day zero?’
The crisis has set up a fierce debate about whether the city will reach a “day zero,” where the Cutzamala system falls to such low levels that it will be unable to provide any water to the city’s residents.
Local media widely reported in early February that an official from a branch of Conagua said that without significant rain, “day zero” could arrive as early as June 26.
But authorities have since sought to assure residents there will be no day zero. In a press conference on February 14, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that work was underway to address the water problems. Mexico City’s mayor, Martí Batres Guadarrama, said in a recent press conference that reports of day zero were “fake news” spread by political opponents.
Conagua declined CNN’s interview requests and did not answer specific questions on the prospect of a day zero.
I was reminded of this powerfully written piece. Frightening, but well worth reading the whole thing:
I’ve had an aversion to being told the truth about bad situations since 2018, when Cape Town city officials first told us we were running out of water. The taps, they said, would be turned off when the six reservoirs that collectively supply the city’s water dropped to 13 per cent of capacity. They were already down to 21 per cent. We didn’t have to take the officials’ word for it – we could drive past the Steenbras or the Theewaterskloof dam and see for ourselves that there was hardly anything in them. The newspapers made a point of saying that we were going to win the worst race in the world and be ‘the first major city to run out of water’. The phrase terrified me not only because of what it meant for Cape Town but because it implied a second city, and a third, and a fourth, were about to loom into view. When the rains came, the fact that we hadn’t run out of water seemed merely a temporary respite, an unearned reprieve that someone else would have to pay for. We had moved to the front of the queue, and then we were shuffled back a bit. Before we were at the front, it was São Paulo. After us, it was Chennai. Always threatening to push in front, Mexico City.
…
As she brushed out her great-granddaughter’s hair, Yolanda [who I interviewed in Mexico City] said that sometimes the pipas didn’t bring enough water for the street, so she and some of the other women would bring the driver into the house and hold him there until SACMEX, the federal water operator, sent another truck. She pointed to the table where they sat him, not with a gun actually held to his head – no need, they all knew the gun was in the room – and gave him coffee and pastries while they waited for the second truck to arrive. Ulises mentioned this thing with the gun, which some people would describe as kidnapping, as we walked up the hill. I said something pathetic about adapting to difficult circumstances, getting used to things you’d never imagine you could get used to. Some rubbish about frogs in boiling water. He said that was one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it was that we were talking about a situation in which one person has the water, and the other has the gun.
That Cape Town didn’t run out of water in 2018 is now being framed as a story of resilience and adaptability. When tourists arrive at the airport, one of the first things they see is a big sign exhorting them to Save Water Like a Local. The suggestion is that we did something special and a bit mysterious. A lot of us did ‘change our relationship with water’. It’s difficult not to respond with alarm when you see a councillor describing the situation as ‘utterly catastrophic’, or when you hear about engineers crying in meetings. There were a few people who refused to be swayed from their conviction that this was one of those scams the government pulls from time to time in order to hike up water tariffs. Some of those people, among them a member of the provincial legislature, found a way to turn it into a conspiracy involving the ‘Jewish mafia’. That really did happen. Alongside the barking mad, there were those who were just a bit bored and irritated by the whole business. Wouldn’t it be fine? Weren’t we more or less OK?
Mostly, we did our bit. We stuck to the limit of fifty litres a day, and those of us who weren’t used to spending our days thinking about water learned exactly how far that amount will get you, as well as how to get it, how to carry it, and how to reuse it without making anyone sick. We learned how much time you spend worrying about water when the prospect of its running out altogether is weeks away: hours and hours, days and days. All the time. We talked about toilets at every opportunity, long, animated, genuinely disgusting conversations about the disposal of human waste. We tried hard because we were scared, and that effort could be described as special and exemplary, especially if you were short of feelgood stories about climate change, but it’s not what saved us. What saved us was that it rained, after four years of not raining. There’s not a great deal of evidence to suggest that we can rely on this happening again, let alone every year. It just doesn’t seem realistic. At the time of writing, I haven’t heard of a single convincing plan to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, in Cape Town or anywhere else. This isn’t to suggest that I would like people to stop trying to find one. It’s more that the only solution I’d find reassuring would be the repeated and emphatic use of the words: We are fine, we are fine, we are fine.
We aren’t fine. In five years’ time, two-thirds of the world’s population is going to be living in a state of ‘water stress’, according to the UN. Either we won’t have enough or it will be dirty or we won’t be able to access it without difficulty. Thirty-three cities are currently suffering ‘extremely high’ water stress, according to the World Resources Institute, which is another way of saying that they are using most of the water they have. This will only get worse as the effects of climate change intensify. Rising temperatures will encourage the flourishing of bacteria and other pathogens. Rising sea levels will salinate freshwater sources, rendering them unusable. More drought means more hunger, but it also means more violence, according to the growing body of research that indicates an ‘overt’ correlation between acute water stress and violent conflict (recent studies have also pointed to the strong connection between resource depletion and violence against women). More flooding means more damage to already compromised sanitation infrastructure, as well as contamination of the remaining supply. In ten years’ time, India will have half the water it needs, as will Zimbabwe, although in its case ten years is an optimistic timeframe, given the unwavering severity of the drought there. Forty per cent of Beijing’s water supply is currently too polluted to use, and Mexico City is draining its aquifers 50 per cent faster than they can be replenished.