This year again, a large part of Mexico lacks water. After three summers of intense heat, the country received a quarter less precipitation than the average of the last thirty years. A peak of drought was reached in September. Currently, more than 71% of the country’s surface area is “abnormally dry”, 19% of the territory is located in “extreme drought”and eight out of ten municipalities face a “water stress”. And the rainy season is coming to an end.
“We had a large number of anomalies”, worries German Martinez, director of the National Water Commission. Waving a map of Mexico which lists the low rainfall recorded this year, the head of water policy deplores that most of the cyclones born in the Atlantic and the Pacific have bypassed the country without dumping their rain there. “In addition, we had three heat waves that we had not seen in decades: it was over 50°C in the cities of Mexicali and Hermosillo. »
In Mexico, a megalopolis located on the bed of a vast lake, which completely dried up at the beginning of the 20th centurye century, and which receives abundant rains every year, drought threatens the second source of water supply: the Cuztamala system. Via a network of 330 kilometers of canals and dams, it can transport up to 15,000 liters of water per second to Mexico City, or a quarter of the city’s consumption.
Reduction of water flow
But the reservoirs that supply it have suffered from the lack of rain over the last three years; they lost 60% of their reserves, which reached the lowest level in their history. In the chic seaside resort of Valle de Bravo, built around the artificial lake of the Cutzamala system in the 1970s, the basin is two-thirds empty, despite a midweek downpour.
The situation is ” critical “, recognized Marti Batres, the mayor of Mexico City, who for the fourth time in seventeen months announced the reduction in the flow of water from the Cutzamala system. At least until April 2024, its supply will be reduced to 9,200 liters of water per second, or 40% of its capacity, affecting the water supply in twenty-eight municipalities and their millions of inhabitants .
The drop in flow from the Cutzamala system puts additional pressure on the government in the thorny issue of water management in the capital, where a third of residents already receive too little, and where entire neighborhoods depend on water supplies. coming and going fleets of tankers – known as “pipas” – to refuel.
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