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Monday, May 13th, 2024

North America’s Biggest City is Running Out of Water

Author:     Caroline Houck
Source:     Vox
Publication Date:     May 9, 2024 | 7:15am EDT
 Link: North America’s Biggest City is Running Out of Water
Stephan:  

Mexico City, I think, should be seen as an alarm bell warning cities throughout the United States, and the world come to that. Water and how it it handled is going to become a major factor in the wellbeing of communities, and neither Mexico nor the cities in the United States are preparing properly. I urge you to do some research into the community in which you live to see whether they are doing what should be done to face what is happening.

Mexico City is being threatened by a water crisis after the main reservoirs remain under 40 percent of their full capacity due to low rainfall, geography, and lack of infrastructure.
  Credit: Hector Vivas/Getty

Mexico City is parched.

After abysmally low amounts of rainfall over the last few years, the reservoirs of the Cutzamala water system that supplies over 20 percent of the Mexican capital’s 22 million residents’ usable water are running out.

“If it doesn’t start raining soon, as it is supposed to, these [reservoirs] will run out of water by the end of June,” Oscar Ocampo, a public policy researcher on the environment, water, and energy, told my colleagues over on the Today, Explained podcast.

Already, some households receive unusably contaminated water; at times, others receive none at all. It’s stoking tensions over obvious inequities: Who gets water and who doesn’t?

The crisis is also leading Mexico City to siphon more from the underground aquifers on which the city sits, a decision that’s not just unsustainable without replenishment but also causes the ground to sink — at […]

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