Water in Mexico, in critical condition
Water in Mexico, in critical condition
Deficiencies in management leave nine million Mexicans without access to drinking water and pose risks to health and the environment, experts warn
Mexico has little or nothing to celebrate on World Water Day. At least nine million Mexicans lacked potable water in 2015, according to official data. The number of overexploited aquifers has tripled since the 1980s, authorities say. Experts denounce that corruption and discretionary resource management have turned large infrastructure works into white elephants, while the contamination of water bodies has created serious health complications.
"It's a crisis that is killing us and acting as if it did not matter," laments Elena Burns, from the Agua collective for everyone. "Maybe you can not hear the cry of the mother of the baby who died of diarrhea because she did not have access to quality water or to people who die of cancer due to the presence of arsenic in underground sources or hear the damage that is making the nervous systems of the children of Iztapalapa [in Mexico City] who drink water with harmful levels of lead ... but all that exists, "adds Burns Contaminacion Del Agua.
The complications of Mexico begin with the availability of the liquid. There is little where it is needed most and vice versa. "It is concentrated in the southeast, where 25% of the population lives, the rest is a semi-desert zone, classified as having low water availability," says Teresa Gutiérrez, director of the Fund for Communication and Environmental Education. When Gutiérrez is asked to mention the critical points of water pressure, he produces a map that highlights the red color throughout the center and the north of the territory, the areas that concentrate the productive activities of the country.
About 81% is used in the agricultural sector (76.7%) and industrial (4.2%), according to the National Water Commission (Conagua). This proportion is higher than that of the rest of the world (close to 70%) and a quality that can ideally be used for human use is used first and reused as irrigation water afterwards.
"In Mexico the treatment and monitoring of water are very poor, we do not consider viruses or parasites, from the microbiological point of view we do not have the situation dominated, metals are not monitored regularly only in cases of emergency," Marisa explains. Mazari, director of the postgraduate course in Sustainability Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Due to this, the possibilities of reusing the water diminish and when it is done it supposes greater risks to the health. The challenge grows as demand increases.
"Everything we produce has a dose of liquid that we do not contemplate, it is estimated that we see less than 5% of the water we consume," Gutiérrez adds. This virtual water is key in the sustainability of the economy and can be damaged in a consumerist spiral. You need, for example, 10,000 liters to produce a pair of jeans and up to 15,000 liters for a kilo of beef, according to the Water Footprint Network.
The rest of the water resources are administered to supply the cities, where more than 68 million people live. "In 50 years, the population doubled and the migration from the countryside to the city multiplied six times the demand per inhabitant," explains Gutiérrez. To meet this need without affecting the environment, efficient management is crucial, but the experts consulted warn that management is deficient. Gutiérrez criticizes that the model is based only on political-administrative parameters, without considering aspects as basic as the water cycle.
Burns goes further and states that he is "crossed by corruption" and that he is "authoritarian, opaque and discretionary." "The big interests determine who has water and who has the right to pollute without anyone saying anything," he claims, adding that rather than as a common good, access to water has been seen as a feature of social differentiation.
The accumulation of problems is reflected in the capital as in no other place, with the added difficulty of supplying more than 20 million inhabitants. It is the nucleus of a federal, but centralized country; it has zones, the most popular, with a population density of more than 16,000 inhabitants per square kilometer; the urban spot grows; It is located on a high plateau more than 2,240 meters above sea level, and is built on a lake surface.
The metropolitan area of the megalopolis sinks into quicksand. It depends on 70% of overexploited and increasingly deep underground waters (up to 500 meters in the subsoil); it only extracts 1% of the 35 rivers that flowed into the city that are piped or contaminated, and it has to import 30% of its supply from the Lerma and Cutzamala systems (the latter is more than 120 kilometers from the capital) .
This has involved large energy costs for pumping the resource to enter and leave the basin, as well as consequences for other regions as distant as the Gulf of Mexico, which provides it, or the Pacific coast, which receives wastewater. "We are leaving a chaos for the generations to come, it is quite unconscious to do nothing now that it is still possible to propose solutions," Mazari states.
A constitutional reform in February 2012 ensured access to water as a human right. It was established in a transitory article that a national law should be created to materialize these guarantees. No initiative has been approved in five years. "Making a regulatory framework for water is much more complex and delicate than the energy reform [which took almost 75 years to complete] because there is no sector that does not need it," says Gutiérrez. "It's a technical draw between the vision of the authorities and that of citizen groups," adds Burns, one of the main participants in the debate.
The specialists hope that the situation will be reversed, but they recognize that the actions are urgent. The participation of citizens is, in their opinion, essential for the control of the authorities, responsible consumption and the establishment of rules on how and how much water should be guaranteed in the 13 hydrological-administrative regions. "We are expelling 800 million cubic meters of rainwater every year, that amount is enough to ensure 100 liters per person every day for the 20 million inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico," says Burns. "The solution is in our hands, but we need a lot of muscle as citizens," he concludes.
Deficiencies in management leave nine million Mexicans without access to drinking water and pose risks to health and the environment, experts warn
Mexico has little or nothing to celebrate on World Water Day. At least nine million Mexicans lacked potable water in 2015, according to official data. The number of overexploited aquifers has tripled since the 1980s, authorities say. Experts denounce that corruption and discretionary resource management have turned large infrastructure works into white elephants, while the contamination of water bodies has created serious health complications.
"It's a crisis that is killing us and acting as if it did not matter," laments Elena Burns, from the Agua collective for everyone. "Maybe you can not hear the cry of the mother of the baby who died of diarrhea because she did not have access to quality water or to people who die of cancer due to the presence of arsenic in underground sources or hear the damage that is making the nervous systems of the children of Iztapalapa [in Mexico City] who drink water with harmful levels of lead ... but all that exists, "adds Burns Contaminacion Del Agua.
The complications of Mexico begin with the availability of the liquid. There is little where it is needed most and vice versa. "It is concentrated in the southeast, where 25% of the population lives, the rest is a semi-desert zone, classified as having low water availability," says Teresa Gutiérrez, director of the Fund for Communication and Environmental Education. When Gutiérrez is asked to mention the critical points of water pressure, he produces a map that highlights the red color throughout the center and the north of the territory, the areas that concentrate the productive activities of the country.
About 81% is used in the agricultural sector (76.7%) and industrial (4.2%), according to the National Water Commission (Conagua). This proportion is higher than that of the rest of the world (close to 70%) and a quality that can ideally be used for human use is used first and reused as irrigation water afterwards.
"In Mexico the treatment and monitoring of water are very poor, we do not consider viruses or parasites, from the microbiological point of view we do not have the situation dominated, metals are not monitored regularly only in cases of emergency," Marisa explains. Mazari, director of the postgraduate course in Sustainability Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Due to this, the possibilities of reusing the water diminish and when it is done it supposes greater risks to the health. The challenge grows as demand increases.
"Everything we produce has a dose of liquid that we do not contemplate, it is estimated that we see less than 5% of the water we consume," Gutiérrez adds. This virtual water is key in the sustainability of the economy and can be damaged in a consumerist spiral. You need, for example, 10,000 liters to produce a pair of jeans and up to 15,000 liters for a kilo of beef, according to the Water Footprint Network.
The rest of the water resources are administered to supply the cities, where more than 68 million people live. "In 50 years, the population doubled and the migration from the countryside to the city multiplied six times the demand per inhabitant," explains Gutiérrez. To meet this need without affecting the environment, efficient management is crucial, but the experts consulted warn that management is deficient. Gutiérrez criticizes that the model is based only on political-administrative parameters, without considering aspects as basic as the water cycle.
Burns goes further and states that he is "crossed by corruption" and that he is "authoritarian, opaque and discretionary." "The big interests determine who has water and who has the right to pollute without anyone saying anything," he claims, adding that rather than as a common good, access to water has been seen as a feature of social differentiation.
The accumulation of problems is reflected in the capital as in no other place, with the added difficulty of supplying more than 20 million inhabitants. It is the nucleus of a federal, but centralized country; it has zones, the most popular, with a population density of more than 16,000 inhabitants per square kilometer; the urban spot grows; It is located on a high plateau more than 2,240 meters above sea level, and is built on a lake surface.
The metropolitan area of the megalopolis sinks into quicksand. It depends on 70% of overexploited and increasingly deep underground waters (up to 500 meters in the subsoil); it only extracts 1% of the 35 rivers that flowed into the city that are piped or contaminated, and it has to import 30% of its supply from the Lerma and Cutzamala systems (the latter is more than 120 kilometers from the capital) .
This has involved large energy costs for pumping the resource to enter and leave the basin, as well as consequences for other regions as distant as the Gulf of Mexico, which provides it, or the Pacific coast, which receives wastewater. "We are leaving a chaos for the generations to come, it is quite unconscious to do nothing now that it is still possible to propose solutions," Mazari states.
A constitutional reform in February 2012 ensured access to water as a human right. It was established in a transitory article that a national law should be created to materialize these guarantees. No initiative has been approved in five years. "Making a regulatory framework for water is much more complex and delicate than the energy reform [which took almost 75 years to complete] because there is no sector that does not need it," says Gutiérrez. "It's a technical draw between the vision of the authorities and that of citizen groups," adds Burns, one of the main participants in the debate.
The specialists hope that the situation will be reversed, but they recognize that the actions are urgent. The participation of citizens is, in their opinion, essential for the control of the authorities, responsible consumption and the establishment of rules on how and how much water should be guaranteed in the 13 hydrological-administrative regions. "We are expelling 800 million cubic meters of rainwater every year, that amount is enough to ensure 100 liters per person every day for the 20 million inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico," says Burns. "The solution is in our hands, but we need a lot of muscle as citizens," he concludes.