Mexico — or much of the country — is running out of water. An extreme drought has left taps dry, and nearly two-thirds of municipalities face shortages that have forced people to stand in line for hours for government water deliveries in some locations.
The water shortage is so serious that residents have already built barriers on highways and kidnapped employees to demand more shipments. The numbers are really scary: in July, 8 of the 32 states faced extreme to moderate drought, leading 1,546 of the 2,463 municipalities to face supply cuts, according to the National Water Commission.
In mid-July, the drought affected 48% of Mexico’s territory – last year, the situation affected 28% of the country.
Linking an isolated drought to the climate crisis requires analysis, but scientists have no doubt that global warming can alter the world’s rainfall patterns and is increasing the likelihood of droughts.
Across the northern border, most of the western half of the US has suffered from moderate to severe drought in recent years. These are the two driest decades in the region in 1,200 years.
The crisis is especially acute in Monterrey, one of the most important economic centers in Mexico, with a metropolitan region of 5 million inhabitants. Some neighborhoods have been without water for 75 days, prompting schools to close before the summer break. A journalist scoured several stores looking for drinking water, including a Walmart supermarket, to no avail.
Buckets are in short supply or are sold at astronomical prices, as residents gather containers to collect water delivered by trucks sent to the most affected neighborhoods. Some use clean garbage cans, and children struggle to help carry the water.
The crisis even affects high-income regions. “Here we have to go hunting for water,” says Claudia Muñiz, 38, whose family has often gone a week without running water. “In a moment of desperation, people explode.”
Monterrey is in northern Mexico and has seen its population grow in recent years, following the economic boom. The region’s typically arid climate does not help to meet the population’s needs, and the climate crisis reduces already scarce rainfall.
Today residents can walk on the dam bed of the Cerro Prieto dam, which was once one of the city’s largest water sources and a major tourist attraction, with lively waterside restaurants, fishing, boating and water skiing. .
The rain that fell in July in parts of the state of Nuevo León, which borders Texas and whose capital is Monterrey, represented just 10% of the monthly average recorded since 1960, according to Juan Ignacio Barragán Villareal, director general of the local water agency. water resources. “Not a drop fell in the entire state in March,” he says. It was the first March without rain since these data began to be recorded in 1960.
Today the government distributes 9 million liters of water a day to 400 neighborhoods. Water truck driver Alejandro Casas says that, when he started in the role five years ago, he helped firefighters and was called once or twice a month to bring water to a burning place. He spent many working days just looking at his phone.
But since January he has been working non-stop, making up to ten trips a day to supply around 200 families at a time. When he arrives at a location, a long line already winds through the streets. People take containers that hold up to 200 liters and spend the afternoon in the sun to receive water only at midnight — and it can be the only one delivered for up to a week.
No one polices the lines, so fights are common, with residents of other communities trying to infiltrate. In May, Casas’ truck was robbed by youths who climbed into the passenger seat and threatened him, demanding that he take the vehicle to their neighborhood. “If we didn’t go where they wanted, they would kidnap us.”
Casas followed the order, filled the residents’ buckets and was released.
Maria de los Angeles, 45, was born and raised in Ciénega de Flores, a city near Monterrey. She says the crisis is affecting her family and her business. “I’ve never seen this before. We only have water in the taps every four or five days,” she says.
The garden plant nursery is her family’s only source of income and requires more water than what comes only occasionally to the taps. “Every week I have to buy a tank that costs me 1,200 pesos [R$ 300] from a private supplier,” he says. It’s half his weekly income. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Small and micro-entrepreneurs like her are frustrated at being left to their own devices, while large industries can operate almost normally: factories are able to receive 50 million cubic meters of water a year, due to federal concessions that grant them special access to the city’s aquifers. .
The government is having a hard time responding to the crisis. To try to mitigate future droughts, the state is investing $97 million in the construction of a wastewater treatment plant and intends to purchase water from a desalination plant under construction in a neighboring state. It also spent $82 million to rent more trucks, pay additional drivers and dig more wells.
The governor of Nuevo León, Samuel García, recently urged the world to act together to combat the climate crisis. “She caught up with us,” he wrote on Twitter. “Today we need to take care of the environment, it’s a matter of life and death.”
