Mexico City is plagued by an almost diabolical combination of floods and water shortages, rising sewage and sinking water tables. What better place for world leaders to come together to discuss how to better manage water?
Many of the 20 million people of this metropolis get by on as little as one hour of running water per week, while almost all the copious rainfall is flushed unused down the sewers, creating a gargantuan flow of wastewater that the city's few treatment plants can't handle.
As with New Orleans, Mexico City is on life support, but on a much larger scale.
Huge pumps work day and night to suck sewage-laced water out of the rapidly sinking, mountain-ringed bowl in which the city lies. Some areas suffer floods of sewage. Around seven in every eight toilet flushes goes untreated.
Mexico City has paved over its rivers and made them into underground sewers or expressways -- often both at the same time -- while pumping so much water from underground aquifers that some neighborhoods sink by up to 0.3m a year.
The city would probably flunk in all the five topics to be discussed at the 4th World Water Forum starting Thursday: How water can be harnessed for growth, be provided more efficiently, better benefit the poor, be used environmentally, and be prevented from causing natural disasters.
Mexico City's system serves no one very well. Almost everyone buys bottled water or expensive home water systems. But it serves the poor worst. For many, bad water or none at all is just another fact of life.
"We don't want to ask for the impossible, but it would be nice if the water could come twice a week," said Juan Maria Bautista Ortiz, 42, whose family of four gets as little as one hour of running water per week at their shack.
Plastic drums sit in their dirt yard to catch the precious liquid when it comes and store about 1,514 liters for an entire week of toilet use, sponge baths, washing clothes and dishes.
The city water system isn't bad because it's cheap. Because it's bad, it's terribly expensive. City water pipes are leaky, low-pressure and often dry, so every home must have an underground storage tank, as well as a system to pump the water up to a rooftop storage tank from where it flows down.
"It costs more than it would to build a well-made water system," said Jesus Campos, the assistant director of Mexico's National Water Commission.
In fact, Mexico City is sinking in an accelerating spiral of water problems. As aquifers are depleted, the ground subsides and breaks underground pipes, causing more of the leaks that already waste about 40 percent of drinking water. Sewage pipes also fracture, releasing sewage that contaminates the aquifers.
As the sewer-rivers, the population, and water wastefulness all multiply, the city must spend even more -- about US$2 billion over the next five years -- not to fix the system or create separate storm drains, but simply to build larger pipes out of the valley.
Where is it all heading? The director of the city's water system, German Martinez, doesn't expect the city's aquifers to last longer than about 50 years. Urban planner Jorge Legoretta says the city has been hit by big floods 25 times in its 700-year history, most recently in the 1950s, and expects "catastrophe No. 26" within 15 years.
Officials aren't proud of the city's water record, but say they're not embarrassed to host the forum.
"I don't like to look at this as a crisis situation," Martinez said. "Every city in the world has problems with water. Mexico City is no exception."
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
TIGHTENING: Zhu Hengpeng, who worked for an influential think tank, has reportedly not been seen in public since making disparaging remarks on WeChat A leading Chinese economist at a government think tank has reportedly disappeared after being disciplined for criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a private chat group. Zhu Hengpeng (朱恆鵬), 55, is believed to have made disparaging remarks about China’s economy, and potentially about the Chinese leader specifically, in a private WeChat group. Zhu was subsequently detained in April and put under investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Zhu worked for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for more than 20 years, most recently as the Institute of Economics deputy director and director of the Public Policy Research Center. He
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
RSS