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As Cape Town Runs Out of Water, Here's a Look at Parts of Mexico City That Have Been Without Water For a Year (buzzfeed.com)
In some places, taps have been dry for over a year. People bathe their children with bottled water. A group of women has taken over water distribution from the city authorities. The future feared by millions of people across the world has already arrived in Mexico City , BuzzFeed News reports. From the report: In certain areas, people say taps go dry for months. Angry civilians have blocked off highways and squared off with riot police, wresting control of water distribution from the government. "Crime affects us deeply but if you don't have water, you can't do anything," said Marisol Fierro, part of a group of women in charge of delivering water to neighbors. Across the ocean, authorities in South Africa talk about Day Zero, when Cape Town is set to run out of water and the city is forced to shut off its taps. It has made headlines around the world, as people watch on with bated breath. But here in Iztapalapa, a sprawling, drab Mexico City borough where nearly 2 million people live, that day has already arrived, offering a window into what the future may hold for millions of people when the taps run dry. Police officers are sometimes forced to guard water trucks, popular targets for kidnappers who sell their contents for hefty prices. In other cities, politicians might promise expanded broadband, better health care, or higher wages to win votes, but in Mexico City, mayoral hopefuls have made simple access to water central to their campaigns. Reserved and quiet, Emma Pantaleon seems an unlikely protagonist at the front lines of this daily battle. Pantaleon joins Fierro and other women -- housewives who juggle child-rearing, house chores, and part-time jobs -- gathering water requests from their neighbors, coordinating trucks' routes with local authorities, and riding along to ensure the operation runs smoothly.
On a recent morning, she sat in the passenger seat of a water tanker as it revved its motor up a hill, dwarfing the dilapidated single-room houses along its path. When the driver swerved left and stepped on the brake, Pantaleon leaped out. It was a scene straight out of Mad Max: Fury Road. Pantaleon, 41, walked over to the nearest cinder block house and called out to its owner. As soon as Catalina Cortez opened the door, the driver and a helper marched in, pulling the truck's hose straight up to a plastic water storage tank taking up a third of the patio.
On a recent morning, she sat in the passenger seat of a water tanker as it revved its motor up a hill, dwarfing the dilapidated single-room houses along its path. When the driver swerved left and stepped on the brake, Pantaleon leaped out. It was a scene straight out of Mad Max: Fury Road. Pantaleon, 41, walked over to the nearest cinder block house and called out to its owner. As soon as Catalina Cortez opened the door, the driver and a helper marched in, pulling the truck's hose straight up to a plastic water storage tank taking up a third of the patio.
typo in story: "bated" breathe = "baited" breath
My country uses uses about 90 liters of water per citizen per day. So basically, in the place in question, they're using 2.6 times as much water as we do. And we happen to pay around $4 USD per cubic meter (despite having no shortage of it and being upstream from all our neigbours), yet they (in a subtropical region) insist on "[delivering] water ... free of charge". I think I may see a problem here...
Ezekiel 23:20
All our problems are self made through greed, pride, obstruction, etc, etc, etc... It's pure politics all the way down. So, let's not hear all this bullshit about how we have to make sacrifices. Let's turn off the taps in New York's financial district first.
So trump was right when he said some of these countries are shithole countries?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Next time you flush your toilet, just remember how blessed you are. That's fresh water that some would fight for that you are flushing.
The article claims 16-21' of rain/year and other sources I googled indicated 12 inches. If they really get 16' of rain per year I don't see them having problems. If 12" is correct, I see how they are going to have huge problems.
This is just racist. You are implying that blacks canâ(TM)t run a successful country. Hopefully the mods ban you.
Everyone has the right to water. Everyone does *not* have the *right* to have water pumped, purified, then transported to wherever they wish to live. Someone has to pay for that. The people who should pay are those who use it.
If there is no more water to be had in a particular area, and nobody wants to pay to get water delivered there, then you're going to have to move somewhere there is water.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
With a population of 7.6 billion, that's 14 million liters per person per year (38,000 liters per person per day) of fresh water literally falling from the skies.
Water shortages are not the problem. They're a symptom. Find out what's preventing these people from moving to an area where water (and presumably other services) are more readily available, or preventing readily available water from being made available for consumption. That will be your problem.
Ironically, when the ancient Aztecs first populated the area that would become modern day Mexico City they had to deal with the fact that the only land there was a small marshy island in the middle of a giant lake. The Mexican flag features an eagle eating a snake. Legend has it that when they saw this bird eating a snake that it was a sign from the gods to found a city there. So they had to invent ways of cultivating crops while they were floating on water. Now the people in this city are running out of water to drink.
Actually they get plenty of water, rains in buckets, but being it's a third world shithole they don't store it.
If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down. (that's what we had to do during drought conditions)
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It there is a truck full of water, that means there is no water shortage, but rather a problem with water distribution network
The pipes needs to be maintained. One common problem when private companies are in charge is that they take the money to make profits and forget to maintain the network. Is that what happened in Mexico City?
"People bathe their children with bottled water"
Children as in plural , stop having so many and resources go further. In a sense it is literally a problem of your own creation.
Yeah, keep breeding. Then seek refuge in countries that still have resources. And then continue breeding.
Let's kill this planet.
Capetown does not qualify as "third world". What we are really seeing here is a "tip of the iceberg" phenomenon, caused by political conservatives who refuse to believe that the world is overpopulated, and refuse to believe that water pollution must be stopped, and refuse to believe that air pollution must be stopped, and refuse to believe in Global Warming.
Perhaps I should remind them that when the "ozone hole" was discovered, even though political conservatives pooh-poohed it, action was taken and the production of chlorocarbons was drastically reduced. Well, it just so happens that if we think about the magnitude of chlorocarbons that affected the atmosphere and caused the ozone hole (which, by the way, is now shrinking), and compare it to the magnitude of carbon dioxide that has been dumped into the atmosphere -- the latter out-masses the former by HALF-A-MILLION TIMES . Anyone claiming that all that CO2 has no effect on the atmosphere is an idiot, period.
Cumulative rainfall in Cape Town for the past 3 years (2015, 2016, 2017) is below the 20th percentile of the past 40 years, see http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/curr...
As a result, the dams haven't been able to recover during the winter as they usually do, you can explore the details here: http://niwis.dws.gov.za/niwis2...
The national government (run by the ANC which is largely seen to be corrupt, including the Dept of Water and Sanitatiom which over-spends their budget and has high levels of irregulat expenditure) has however not been cooperative with the provincial government and City of Caoe Town (both run by the DA, which has been highly critical of the corruption in the ANC).
National government has built desalination plants in ANC-run cities that are less affected by the drought (e.g. Richard's Bay), but in Cape Town, the city has even had to foot the bill for the only major dam to be constructed in the Western Cape in the past 20 years (the Berg River dam).
Well, it just so happens that if we think about the magnitude of chlorocarbons that affected the atmosphere and caused the ozone hole (which, by the way, is now shrinking), and compare it to the magnitude of carbon dioxide that has been dumped into the atmosphere -- the latter out-masses the former by HALF-A-MILLION TIMES .
That comparison is one of the greatest examples of dumbassery I've seen in a long time. The quantity difference is irrelevant if the effect size per unit is vastly different. Sugar and cyanide might both be bad for you but you can tolerate a fuck of a lot more sugar than cyanide.
Actually they get plenty of water, rains in buckets, but being it's a third world shithole they don't store it.
Store it where? There are plenty of first world cities that get massively caught out by drought just the same way as Cape Town did. Most cities have not changed the way they collect and store water in the past 20 years. Major dam and infrastructure projects can take that long to actually get completed. The problem can be somewhat offset by individuals who don't have such as long process to go through, but then everyone with enough money in Cape Town already has a water tank in their back yard.
We can look forward to various outbreaks of disease and illness when it comes time for these people to actually drink it though.
You're a trumpdiot.
Compared to population growth,dysgenics, poor governance and fossil water depletion, temperature increases aren't even a drop in the pond.
See for yourself :
http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/cl...
Rainfall hardly budged from the beginning of last century.
My family's down to 20 liters per person per day with a sub-R1000 grey water system. We re-use the washing machine's water by catching it in a 210 liter drum. We then add some swimming pool chlorine for decontamination and bought a secondhand washing machine pump to pump it into the toilet with our unused garden hose. The washing machine's water is now also a third as the first rinse's water is used for the second load's wash and the second rinse's water is used for the second load's first rinse. If we can make is slighly neater, we'll keep the system in pace after the drought.
But your first world places have reservoirs, and some like California have new programs to store floodwater to lessen dependence on aquifers since that's a known issue in coming decades (solution is purely engineering problem).
Filtering water from lakes and reservoirs to excellent quality is a long solved problem, plenty of huge cities have that as norm
That's a cool setup! So efficient. Is it strange to have dark water in the toilet? My washer output goes into the garden and it is visibly not clear.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Yes. Reservoirs that were designed between 80 and 40 years ago and not reviewed since. Cape Town isn't the first city to nearly run out of water, and it happens in the first world too.
The point that you're missing is that unless a water crisis was addressed 10 years ago and engineering is already underway, even a first world city would have problem avoiding a potential disaster in the face of a changing climate.
nonsense, climate isn't changing that fast. don't be misled by hoopla over weather.
reservoirs are being designed and built, aquifer recharging is now being done too. just engineering problems