By Yesenia Bustos Servín, Marco Antonio Herrera Ocampo and María Jose Cervantes Ruiz

The topic we decided to talk about is the scarcity of water in Mexico City, because people are not aware of the natural resources that the world can lack in a future; civilization, has been wondering when will it happen, and the answer is that probably in less than 10 years (because, unfortunately, Mexico City is suffering scarcity of water during more than five continuous days).

Lack of water in Mexico City is a big issue that does not only affect the population of it, it has a big background that has affected a lot of things too. Actually the problem is because of the low levels of water’s press. This is because we are not   conscious of our actions and we do not care, we don’t get informed, we keep thinking there are no consequences and this is not only about us, it has also affected all of the biodiversity.

What future we are hoping for with this problem?

This is a big issue that we should care more about and find a solution to it, It is caused because the water press that distribute water to Mexico City is not getting enough water as a result the water press is now working with only 51% of its capacity, Actually there are a lot of Mexicans that are suffering due to this problematic, and they only get water some days in a week, This topic affects Mexico City’s citizens because in a lot of entities there is already a lackage of water thus making it difficult to even make quotidian activities impossible.

People in Mexico are starting to notice this is not a joke, there are a lot of people dealing with this issue, because they don’t always get water so they struggle every day to keep doing their daily activities, but it is hard, because as mentioned before this problem also affects its surroundings and the environment.

During the years, Mexico City has seen water as a principal and common privilege(due to the economy of the country)…unfortunately, they have been struggling with water scarcity, having them during a whole week without water in the future; what we don’t know, it’s that maybe in the future, it’s not going to be only a week but a month or the whole life.

During this whole week, more than half of public schools have seen the necessity of asking parents to pick up their kids from school due to the lack of water; because the bathrooms and hygiene is not an option right now.

The drinking and clean water is only 37% of the normal capacity that the city may have…and being cut from the privilege of water during probably a whole month. That’s why the government has started a campaign for solving the water problem and how we can stop the bad use of potable water.

When South Africa in 2018 suffered from the drought, people started panicking, but never thought that it could go so far away… without planning new strategies to stop the drought in case of one in Mexico.

The water cisterns in Mexico City have been completely empty, and these days are still happening…making citizens panic and start wondering if they will ever have water again (as they have used to do during their whole life), and if this is correct, then, when? Since February 12, kindergartens and primary schools have been closing due to the difficult situation they are in without potable water; and in case, parents cannot take care of their children, then they will bring buckets of water to help children sanitize their hands and flush the toilets.

Buying a private water pipe would be about $1800, which can be harmful for the economy and stability of schools (specially the public ones), so it’s a very good option by the other hand (something that several of them have been doing). In the last news, children that can’t go back to their home, must bring their own personal bucket filled with water from their houses…this for their personal hygiene, every time necessary without sharing it with other classmates. The private schools and government are going to start working for applying personal harvests of rain water, for the systems to accept the return to classes, and general systems of the sewer system.

Everyone should try everything that is in their hands so together we can get to a solution, The actions we can take are a lot, but the problem is having the intention and worries from part of the citizens, knowing that at any moment the lack of water for six days, can end in an eternal lack of water due to the wrong use of it.

Actions that could be implemented

• Green farming
• Sustainability
• 7 different RSS
• Green architecture
• Ecological and free green spaces
• Separation and burning of final trash as a process
• Stop the wrong use of water (with our daily tasks and activities).

We can conclude that Mexico is suffering one of its biggest water crises in its history as a country and we are the ones that can really make a difference, we have different ways of helping to get this problem to be a less critical situation. The first and the most important would be to save water so that we as citizens seek to help ourselves.

In the UAE they have experimented with making artificial rain, this is possible by throwing bombs in the sky, and it has worked.

References

Barrientos-Nieto, O. (January 30, 2024). Desabasto de agua: tandeo, pipas y colonias sin suministro en Ciudad de México. Recovered from https://elpais.com/

Capital 21. (August 15, 2022). Sacmex garantizará abasto de agua en la CDMX por reducción del Cutzamala. Recovered from https://www.capital21.cdmx.gob.mx/

Dixit, P. (November 17, 2023). What is artificial rain? Here’s how cloud seeding fared in UAE, China, Russia. Recovered from https://www.businesstoday.in/

Herrera, O. V. (February 13, 2024). Crisis hídrica pega a escuelas de CDMX: no hay agua para los sanitarios y regresan a los niños a sus casas. Recovered from https://www.infobae.com