Mexico City’s water crisis is worsening
MEXICO CITY — A collision of climate change, urban sprawl and poor infrastructure has pushed Mexico City to the brink of a water crisis.
The groundwater is vanishing. A reservoir got so low that it is no longer used to supply water. Last year was Mexico’s hottest and driest in at least 70 years. And one of the city’s water systems faces a potential “Day Zero” this summer, when levels dip so much that it, too, will no longer provide water.
“We’re suffering because the city is growing immeasurably and it cannot be stopped,” said Gabriel Martínez, 64, who lives in an apartment complex that struggles to get enough water for its residents. “There aren’t enough resources.”
Mexico City, once a waterrich valley that was drained to make way for a vast city, has a metropolitan population of 23 million, among the 10 largest in the world and up from 15 million in 1990. It is one of several major cities facing water shortages, including Cape Town, South Africa; Sao Paulo; and Chennai, India. Many are the consequence of years of poor water management compounded by scarce rains.
And although Mexico City’s problems are worsening, they are not new. Some neighborhoods have lacked adequate piped water for years, but today, communities that have never had shortages are suddenly facing them.
Experts were warning about dwindling water supplies almost two decades ago to little avail. If the capital’s water network was already held together by a thread then, now “some parts of the system are falling apart,” said Manuel Perló Cohen, an urban planning researcher who studies Mexico City’s water system.
“Mexico is the biggest market in the world for bottled water,” said Roberto Constantino Toto, who heads the water research office at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. It is a reflection, he added, “of the failure of our water policy.”
Exceptionally dry conditions are the immediate source of the city’s water plight. Mexico has long been vulnerable to droughts, but nearly 68% of the country is in moderate or extreme drought, according to the National Water Commission.
The Cutzamala water system — one of the world’s largest networks of dams, canals and pipes that supplies 27% of the capital’s water — is at a historically low 30% of its normal capacity, official figures show. At the same point last year, it was at 38%, and in 2022, it stood at 45%.
Officials have projected June 26 as an estimated Day Zero, when the Cutzamala system could drop to the 20% base line where it would no longer be tapped to provide water to Mexico City.
The water level at one reservoir fell so low that officials halted its use in April.
“It’s sad,” Juan Carlos Morán Costilla, 52, a fisherman who lives along the reservoir, said as he stood on heat-cracked ground that was once underwater.
Groundwater, which supplies most of the city’s water, is pumped out twice as fast as it is replenished, experts said.
The city’s water supply, some of which is brought in from far away, flows through old pipes along an 8,000-milelong grid vulnerable to earthquakes and sinking ground, and where leaks have caused an estimated 35% water loss — more than the Cutzamala system provides.
The city’s water challenge has become an issue in elections next month.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose aides have said Day Zero will not happen, has insisted that his government is already addressing Mexico City’s water problems. New wells were being dug, he said, and officials are working to end corruption involving water consumed by big industries. He has also proposed bringing more water in from outside the city.
Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s protege who resigned as Mexico City mayor last year to become the leading presidential candidate, has defended her administration’s handling of the water crisis.
Scientists, she said recently, could not have predicted the prolonged drought, and, if elected president, she would present an ambitious plan to fix the issues.
The National Water Commission did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Some areas of Mexico City have long been without sufficient tap water, including Iztapalapa, a working-class community and the capital’s most populous borough with 1.8 million people. Residents rely on municipal water trucks to fill cisterns or water tanks in homes or buildings. If that is not enough, people pay for private trucks or, in extreme cases, illegally tap water lines.
For 20 years, Dan Ortega Hernández, 50, never had a problem with running water at his barbershop in Mexico City’s Tlalpan borough. But in November, he said he turned on the faucet and nothing came out. Now, when he does get running water under the rationing plan, he fills a 1,100-liter tank and hopes it lasts until the next scheduled day for running water.
That is a more regular supply than at his home elsewhere in Tlalpan. He said municipal water trucks used to come every four days or so but now take longer, sometimes up to a month. Rather than using water at home, he washes the family’s clothes at a laundromat near his shop.
“It’s scary that we’re running out of resources,” he said.
The Day Zero warning by some experts has been a flashpoint in Mexico City, used to bash the governing party, which includes López Obrador and Sheinbaum. But it has also helped train the public’s attention to the deepening problem.
“It creates a feeling of fear, anxiety, worry,” said Fabiola Sosa Rodríguez, a water management and climate policy researcher.