Mexico City may be just months away from running of out water | CNN
www.cnn.com
The metropolis of nearly 22 million people is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography and leaks — are compounded by climate change.
  • theodewere@kbin.social
    64·
    7 months ago

    Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research.

    holy crap

    • OutlierBlue@lemmy.caEnglish
      65·
      7 months ago

      It’s going to become more and more common. We’ve altered the climate enough that weather patterns will change drastically, and we’ve been sucking aquifers dry as though they’re endless.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    383·
    7 months ago

    What is now Mexico City used to be Tenochtitlan. An artist made a rendering of what Tenochtitlan might have looked like before the Spanish arrived. The entire place was a lake, and the city was built in the middle of the lake. It contained canals everywhere, and had causeways connecting the edges of the lake to the city.

    I wonder if Mexico City has been effectively slowly “mining” that lake for centuries. I suppose the lake will be fed by precipitation, because the city is in a bowl so any rain that falls there will be collected, but does the amount of rain come anywhere close to matching what they’re using?

    As an aside, to me it’s tragic that the main temple of the Aztecs was razed and a Catholic church was plopped down on top of it. Just as tragic is that the Spanish indoctrination process was so successful that only 0.3% of the country has a non-Christian religion. As a result, most Mexicans see the church the Spanish had built not as a grotesque symbol of the destruction of the original city, but as a good and holy place.

    • blazeknave@lemmy.world
      5·
      7 months ago

      You’re not drinking the tap anyway. Supposedly even the ice in the drinks is from bottles. The locals drink bottled too. I’ve never gotten sick there. It’s an amazing cosmopolitan city. You’ll have a blast. The ruins are sick. The dispensaries have mushrooms if that’s your thing. Tons of seafood. It was a moral quandary for me but I indulged in octopus last visit and it’s out of this world in many restaurants. Incredible museums and art.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        3·
        7 months ago

        How does one of the biggest cities on Earth have such poor quality drinking water? I’m not a water purification technician but, shouldn’t they have reasonable means to implement water treatment?

      • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 months ago

        Thanks for the advice, unfortunately I’m a vegetarian. I’m going for the ruins actually! I’m a giant Mesoamerican history dork, in fact I’m reading a book about deciphering Nahuatl hieroglyphs. I got my route planned out all ready for the Museo Nacional de Antropología and Teotihuacan. I know enough Spanish to hopefully keep me out of trouble.

        • blazeknave@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 months ago

          Assuming you’re American? One of the first times I deprogrammed myself from “we’re the uncivilized colonies” was seeing the amount of water bottles consumed across Europe. The US is blessed with the water we’ve had. It’s not the norm.