As the end of the four-month rainy season approaches in Mexico City, it has finally begun to rain. But the daily downpours, which have overwhelmed the city’s drainage network and flooded the subway stations, arrived too late.
Mexico is experiencing its worst drought in six decades. Crops are drying up in the fields and water is being rationed in the capital. Residents of poor neighborhoods have hijacked water trucks and there are other signs of social tensions building.
El Nino, a weather pattern that warms water in the Pacific Ocean and leads to changing weather around the Pacific Basin, is causing the drought, Mexican officials say.
The rainy season typically begins in June. Rain falls almost daily in most of the country, irrigating the spring planting and filling reservoirs before the dry months. But this year, the first three months of the rainy season were dry.
Almost 40 percent of the farm land inspected by the government has been affected by the drought, causing shortfalls in the harvests of corn, beans, wheat and sorghum. The Mexican government is spending more than US$100 million to buy emergency crop insurance and dispense direct aid to farmers.
The drought has forced the 20 million residents of Mexico City and its suburbs to confront the vulnerability of their water supply.
The Aztecs built Mexico City, or Tenochtitlan, on an island within a network of shallow lakes. Dykes and canals regulated the flow of water across the vast basin and held back floodwaters.
But the Spanish conquerors set about draining the lakes, and a century ago, the city began to extract water from wells drilled to the water table below. About 70 percent of Mexico City’s water is now pumped out of the aquifer at a rate more than twice as fast as rainfall is able to replenish it.
The other 30 percent of the city’s water is pumped from reservoirs. As the level in those reservoirs was depleted this spring, the city began to restrict water supply in different areas for several days at a time.
The city also began to exhort residents to save water and fix leaky faucets.
As much as a third of the city’s water supply is lost to leaks in homes and in pipelines.
The city government heavily subsidizes the cost of water and Ramon Aguirre, the official in charge of the water supply, said last month that he would lobby the city assembly to drop the subsidy for large consumers.
On the wealthy west side of Mexico City, green lawns and shiny cars are evidence of how much water households use. A study by the National Polytechnic Institute estimated that the city’s wealthy households consumed four to fives times as much water as poor households on the city’s east side.
In many poor neighborhoods, the water supply has been cut off frequently and many people start lining up at 4am to ask for water trucks to fill tanks in their houses.
Last week, after the most intense downpour in 10 years, reporters immediately asked Aguirre whether all the rain would ease the shortage.
But for the rain to enhance the water supply, it had to fall to the west of Mexico City, where the reservoirs are. Instead, the rain fell on the city, got swept into the drains and eventually emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS