Mexico City's Water Crisis

Barkin, David

MEXICO CITY'S WATER CRISIS HAS myriad faces. Many poor communities not only lack regular service, they lack access to any supply of water suitable for human consumption. Exacerbating the...

...The lake continues to exert its influence, while the authorities seem impotent to reverse the process...
...The abundant rains that fell during the summer months naturally replenished these water systems and networks...
...The city blithely continues to draw large volumes of water from neighboring states and discharges virtually all of its wastewater through a costly drainage system into the rivers of a nearby state, where forage and food crops are grown for the Mexico City market...
...In absolute terms, however, water rates in unity iucoCity Mexico City and throughout the Central Valley main are scandalously low...
...The Mexican partners are among the country's largest construction and banking groups...
...ters, while the clearing of nearby wooded areas for infrastructure and housing further diminished nature's ability to recharge the aquifers...
...Aggravating the situation, substantial sectors of the population in the poorest areas of the eastern part of the city still receive water of unacceptable quality and suffer the inconven27NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON WATER ience of rotating schedules for water deliveries, whether through the water network or from tanker trucks...
...7 The harvesting of rainwater has only recently emerged as an important strategy...
...This law encouraged private participation "in the use and exploitation of water, as well as in its distribution and control...
...The "reclamation" of swampy lands and the paving of city streets reduced the areas capable of naturally replenishing the aquifers...
...Even so, within the city, differences in the availability and quality of service are extreme...
...The private contractors assumed responsibility for operating the system and delivering potable water to consumers...
...Water Networks" administered by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy <http://www.iatp.org...
...The companies reduced water leakage in the distribution system from 37% to 30% between 1997 and 2001...
...The situation did not change with Independence or the 80 Fa. z Revolution of 1910...
...More significant is the question of whether the next administration will be inclined to make the same longterm commitment required to assure the effectiveness of such an investment...
...These "irregular" Hulxquilucan near settlements transformed Mexico City, residents are forced to collect new communities into water in potentially sites of "natural" disastoxic oil drums...
...This system, introduced in 1994, was supposed to reduce subsidies and encourage a culture of economy in water use...
...8 Without a significant and effective campaign to change habits of water use, the underlying pressure of an inexorably growing demand will overwhelm other measures, even those that effectively improve supply management...
...For example, local and national regulations require the removal of toilets with large tanks, which are to be replaced by models that con28 sume less water...
...Most of the wastewater is carried out of the city through a drainage system to the Mezquital Valley east of the capital, where it is supposedly dedicated to forage crops and animal use...
...The most dramatic evidence of these excessive withdrawals of water is the gradual sinking of important 25NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON WATER landmarks, such as the Palace of Fine Arts and the National Cathedral...
...Little attention has been paid to the impending crisis...
...Official figures report that 97% of the valley's population has potable water piped into their homes...
...Unlike in many other cities in Mexico and elsewhere, the terms of private participation for Mexico City were defined as "service contracts" rather than concessions...
...They are more likely to result from a new wave of activism in the regions from which present supplies of water are drawn...
...5. The consortium for each quadrant is required to have a majority control (51%) by Mexican capital...
...Buildings throughout the Central Valley are slowly descending as the water level drops...
...Transfers from the nearby Lerma River system began in the middle of the 20th century...
...The damage has not been limited to these national monuments...
...Twenty-nine water treatment plants are supposed to assure the suitability of water for normal use, but some 40% of the processed water is lost either to leakage in the primary and secondary networks or to people who do not pay for it...
...3 Its most serious concern was the high cost of operating the system and the exceedingly large volume of water being consumed in the valley...
...Solid waste and sewage water were literally swept aside as the population and industrial production burgeoned...
...Unfortunately, a well-entrenched oligarchy continues to abuse its political and economic power, often in opposition to local government...
...The city has only one industrial-sized wastewater treatment 26 plant, and although more than 94% of households in Mexico City are connected to sewage lines, little of the wastewater is treated...
...This would help the city to slow the sinking process caused by the lake's depletion, and would permit the storage of water for seasonal needs...
...The chinampas were constructed from organic material dredged from the lagoons and enriched with organic waste from the crops cultivated upon them...
...When compared to 13 demand other large metropolitan areas in Mexico, resi- table dential consumers in the capital pay only 72% of the resulting average...
...Unfortunately, the haphazard pattern of urban development foreclosed these options...
...The city also was charged with expanding the service systems for both potable water and sewage...
...Large industrial users have responded well to the new system, and have acted on incentives to economize on water use in production by installing treatment facilities in their plants...
...6. This division of responsibilities has become an area of serious conflict because of certain jurisdictional ambiguities and because the arrangement has not been explained to the population...
...Both the new law and the CNAs privatization agenda stemmed from World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank pressure...
...Aggravating the problem was the inability of successive administrations to enforce the few zoning and environmental regulations designed to limit settlement in the hillsides, ravines and high forests where water might easily have been stored...
...The underlying imbalance between demand and supply has not been addressed, in part because the progressive rate structure has not made consumption costly enough to limit waste...
...In reality, however, many poor communities only receive water from tanker trucks that deposit it in 55-gallon drums previously used for shipping chemicals or other hazardous products...
...See, for example, the "Right to Water" and the "U.S...
...For centuries, colonial administrations in Mexico City simply exploited local lakes to meet the city's water needs, rather than maintain the complex hydrological systems that earlier indigenous civilizations developed...
...To define the scope of operation for each of the foreign corporations-the French companies Suez and Vivendi, and the U.K.-based United Utilities and Severn Trent-and their Mexican partners, the city was divided into administrative quadrants...
...5 Planners envisioned a multi-stage process in which management partnerships were to create a reliable list of rate payers, introduce a system for collecting payments and develop an information system to accurately map the underground supply and disposal networks...
...Exacerbating the problem are the environmental effects of water policies that have put the whole metropolitan area at risk...
...Perhaps the most important challenge facing Mexico City and the nation as a whole is the need to create a "new culture of water...
...The lakebed reservoir proved insufficient to meet the city's growing needs...
...Mexico City's water crisis will likely become much worse before a political climate emerges that is conducive to achieving an environmental and social balance in the management of this crucial resource...
...In the southern part of the valley, a highly productive agriculture was practiced on the floating gardens known as the chinampas of Xochimilco-the second largest of the five lakes...
...In early 2004, they dramatized their demands by protesting and closing down a pumping station for one day...
...In Mexico City, a plan to build four treatment plants during the 1990s floundered for lack of financing, and no serious proposals have been made since...
...Arrojo was awarded the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe for his effective leadership of this struggle...
...7. Many of these issues are discussed at length in David Barkin, Innovaciones Mexicanas an el manejo del agua (Mexico City: Universidad Aut6noma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, 2001...
...SURPRISINGLY, MANY RESIDENTS OF THE CAPITAL are unaware that significant parts of the city's water system were transferred to private operators more than a decade ago...
...Perhaps the most serious is the need to implement wastewater treatment more broadly...
...A rural comn outside Me) blockades a highway toc access to po water...
...Agriculture has been severely restricted and productive systems disrupted, forcing basic changes in the lives of the people in these regions...
...An emerging public consciousness seeks new solutions to old problems, and some local agencies are now undertaking campaigns to economize on water use and create the much-needed new culture of water...
...Although much of the information on water management in Mexico City is widely available, it has been conveniently assembled in this book...
...ALTHOUGH PRIVATIZATION HAS IMPROVED THE efficiency of some aspects of the water system in Mexico City over the past decade, it has not effectively confronted the basic challenges facing the region...
...Often, local administrators actually aided and abetted squatter movements in return for political supLacklnga reliablesource port, thereby hastening of potable water in the environmental destrucmunicipality of tion...
...Some 30 years later, the Cutzamala system began transporting water from over 500 miles away, lifting it more than 3,000 feet for delivery to Mexico City...
...The newly-formed CNA focused on the impending water supply crisis in the metropolitan area and on creating a strong institutional structure to support its mandate to promote decentralization...
...2 The 21 small sewage-processing plants only effectively handle about a tenth of the total discharge...
...Constructive responses to Mexico City's impending water crisis are unlikely to come from the complacent metropolitan consumer...
...The new systems are largely self-financing and have generated attractive profits for the companies, while liberating local government from covering the operational costs of the secondary network...
...To address this, the CNA is imposing penalties for effluent discharges that exceed the amount permitted by law...
...More water has been extracted from the aquifers on which the city still sits than was injected back into the subsoil to maintain the hydraulic balance...
...The initiative for soliciting private participation in water management in Mexico City originated with the National Water Commission (CNA), created in 1992 under the new "Law of National Waters...
...Historical neglect, political venality and ignorance have contributed to this crisis, permitting the systematic deforestation of the surrounding mountains and the construction of communities in the ravines and alongside the lakebeds through which water descends during the rainy season...
...Despite numerous attempts to bolster their foundations with creative engineering projects designed to slow the subsidence and correct the structural damage, the sinking process continues...
...These policies have impoverished the ecosystem and are threatening the precarious equilibrium that determines the rate at which the city sinks into the lakebed below...
...Although larger water users do pay more for their water, the rich spend a substantially smaller proportion of their incomes for the service than do the poor...
...Many wealthier neighborhoods and industrial zones are well supplied, while many poorer districts remain bereft of service...
...Also, the importance of installing flow restrictors on showers and faucets is not generally appreciated, and educational campaigns to introduce "leak detectors" are virtually non-existent...
...Since rates are fixed by the local legislature and the public office bears the seal of the city and the Water Commission, the public's ire has been directed at politicians rather than the foreign companies, about which most people remain unaware...
...Nevertheless, the existing rate structure, together with the institutional framework that permits some to Perhaps the most important challenge facing Mexico City and the nation as a whole is the need to create a new culture of water...
...This ignorance may explain the lack of resistance to the municipality's decision to award management contracts to some of the largest international water companies for them to administer the payment system and conduct minor repairs...
...The impact of these transfers on the people and ecosystems in the river basins from which the water originates has been disastrous...
...The availability and quality of drinking water in some areas has deteriorated to such a degree that local communities, most notably the indigenous Mazahua, who live in the neighboring state of Mexico, are now demanding a reduction in the transfers and greater compensation for what they consider to be their water...
...Even today, rainfall would probably satisfy all the city's water needs if provisions were made to store some of the water behind dams and to inject the remainder into the lakebed for use during the long dry season...
...HISTORICALLY, WATER MANAGEMENT IN MEXICO CITY has been entrusted to a municipal water department that reports directly to the mayor...
...1. This often involves carrying water from central delivery points to homes, sometimes at a considerable distance...
...And while the aggrieved have demanded compensation for water extracted in the past, it is unlikely that any government will ever seriously make amends for the social and economic losses suffered by source communities...
...Numerous smaller systems controlled the levels of water in the valley, protecting against flooding and ensuring adequate supplies of potable water...
...This remained the case even after the center-left Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) assumed control of the local government, and is in sharp contrast to the situation in other countries where privatization schemes became highly contentious...
...These demands are being supported by the state government, controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which opportunistically sees the water transfer issue as a means of negotiating concessions from the "all-powerful" giant that is Mexico City, controlled by the oppositional PRD...
...The valley's inhabitants lived on islands connected to each other by canals heavily trafficked by both people and goods...
...draw unlimited volumes of water from the common aquifer in the valley, continues to hinder any improvement in water conservation...
...Ironically, those without regular service are dependent on tanker trucks for delivery and end up paying substantially more, both in absolute terms-cost per gallon-and in relation to income...
...Mexico City's government recently announced a substantial investment in new wells that would inject rainwater back into the lakebed...
...3. This is a subject of great importance at present, in light of the unhappy experiences that have led to violent confrontations in other countries of the Third World, like Bolivia, Argentina and the Philippines...
...The movement successfully opposed a grandiose scheme of the central government, which proposed inter-basin water transfers to sustain a program of intensive commercial agriculture and tourism development in the country's driest regions...
...Similar regulatory initiatives are widely disregarded in the United States, too...
...4. Gestidn delAgua en el Distrito Federal: Retos ypropuestas (Mexico City: UNAM, 2004...
...In pre-colonial times, indigenousdevised water systems in the valley's shallow lake basin serviced local urban settlements and agriculture...
...Of course, this dramatic increase in revenues had a direct effect on the population, which frequently organized to express its displeasure with the new rates...
...The system was recuperating less than 40% of its operating costs through fees...
...Already there is a political consensus that the national government can no longer simply exercise its executive fiat to quench the capital's thirst, as it has done historically...
...There is also ongoing conflict between the City Water Commission and those district (delegacidn) authorities who must act in cases of emergency to repair the primary distribution network...
...Two systems were built to pump large volumes of water from outside the valley for use in the metropolitan area...
...But an alarming volume of the untreated water is used to irrigate fruits and vegetables that are then shipped to city markets...
...These tasks are generally considered to be women's work...
...The water was transported by aqueduct from the numerous springs in the surrounding hills to service the booming population...
...2. Much of the material in this section is drawn from a recent study commissioned by the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District to the University Program for Urban Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, Gestidn delAgua en el Distrito Federal: Retos ypropuestas(Mexico City: UNAM, 2004...
...8. This expression was popularized by a grassroots water movement in Spain led by Pedro Arrojo...
...structural changes were being considered, water charges were based on a flat fee for each user regardless of the volume consumed...
...At the time, average consumption levels in large urban areas in other countries was about 50 gallons a day per inhabitant...
...The consequences are apparent in the environmental morass that has enveloped Mexico City in recent decades...
...By the mid-20th century, high rates of population growth, accelerated industrialization and the expansion of the central bureaucratic apparatus intensified the demand for water...
...As is true of many other such announcements, however, it remains to be seen if the resources for this project will be made available and if the wells will effectively achieve the intended goals...
...They were also to establish an efficient system for installing, repairing and maintaining water meters as well as for installing new service...
...Users of the base amount pay only a flat administrative fee of about US$1.00 for the service...
...Given the city government's prevailing culture of inefficiency, it is remarkable that, so far, the water system has been maintained well enough to avoid massive shortfalls and widespread flooding...
...In the eastern area, inhabitants carefully regulated the salinity of Lake Texcoco by routinely channeling out excess volumes of saline...
...About 50% of costs are presently covered by service charges and the city's general budget foots the remaining bill...
...During the first seven years under company administration, the numbers of ratepayers increased sixfold and water fee collections almost doubled...
...Consequently, these groups incur much higher real costs than do upper-income groups who usually do not consume more than the allotted minimum...
...in Mexico City each person was using 95 gallons a day.4 Another strong motivation for enlisting private administrators was the irrational rate structure and the municipality's inability to collect payments...
...6 Most people who have studied this arrangement agree that, during their first ten years, the concessions successfully achieved their objectives...
...1 The city's complex and aging hydraulic infrastructure suffers from numerous failings...
...The resulting deficits severely limited the city's ability to expand coverage to areas of new population growth...
...This turned out to be a felicitous arrangement because it avoided the problem of raising rates to pay for the full operation of the water system...
...Unlike those in most other urban areas in Mexico, water fees for domestic users in the capital are based on a progressive rate that rises as water use increases...
...Mexico City lies surrounded by high mountains in an elevated valley, about 7,800 feet above sea level, in the center of the country...
...When the The city lacks the capacity to re-use significant volumes of water for industrial and agricultural production within the valley, a practice that would alleviate the demand for freshwater...
...Nevertheless, a large part of the housing stock retains the older, more wasteful models...
...This dispute is now being aired in the Supreme Court...
...Because poorer families tend to be larger and several households often draw their water from a single water meter, their usage exceeds the minimum, so they are charged more than the corresponding flat rate...
...As a result, the city still lacks the capacity to re-use significant volumes of water for industrial and agricultural production within the valley, a practice that would alleviate the demand for freshwater...
...There are numerous other fundamental tasks that await municipal attention throughout Mexico...
...For continuing information on this struggle, I recommend consulting the listservs that are documenting this process and pointing participants to analytical materials to better understand the process...
...Thus, the city's water management problems not only threaten the viability of Mexico City, but also jeopardize the well-being of outlying communities and environments...
...Commercial water users-including industrial plants and service providers-pay up to 600% more for small volumes of water, but once their consumption reaches the highest rate bracket they pay virtually the same rate as households...
...The contractors were also assigned responsibility for maintaining and repairing leaks in the secondary water and sewage networks that service their respective regions...
...The city's Water Commission was to continue providing service to the primary networks that deliver water to local districts and take their sewage to the main discharge system...
...Together, the two transfer systems supply approximately a third of the area's present water needs...

Vol. 38 • July 2004 • No. 1


 
Developed by
Kanda Software
  Kanda Software, Inc.