Social tensions rise as Mexico suffers worst drought in 60 years

Published on Sunday 13 September 2009 22:09

MEXICO is enduring its worst drought in 60 years, with crops drying up in the fields and water being rationed in the capital.

Residents of poor neighbourhoods have hijacked water trucks, and there are other signs of social tensions building, with water supplies cut off frequently, and many people queuing from 4am to ask for water trucks to fill tanks in their houses.

El Nino, a weather pattern that warms water in the Pacific Ocean and leads to changing weather around the Pacific Basin, is causing the drought.

The rainy season typically begins in June. Rain falls almost daily in most of the country, irrigating the spring planting and filling reservoirs before the dry months. But this year, the first three months of the rainy season were dry, and officials warned that the reservoirs were falling to dangerously low levels.

Almost 40 per cent of the farm land inspected by the government has been affected by the drought, causing shortfalls in the harvests of crops such as corn, beans and wheat. But the Mexican government is spending 60 million to buy emergency crop insurance and to dispense direct aid to farmers.

The drought has forced the 20 million residents of Mexico City and its suburbs to confront the vulnerability of their water supply. The Aztecs built Mexico City, or Tenochtitlan, on an island in a network of shallow lakes. Dykes and canals regulated water flow across the vast basin and held back floodwaters.

But the Spanish conquerors set about draining the lakes, and a century ago, the city began to extract water from wells drilled to the water table below. About 70 per cent of Mexico City's water is now pumped out at a rate more than twice as fast as rainfall is able to replenish it.

The other 30 per cent of the city's water is pumped – uphill – from reservoirs 80 miles to the west. As the level in those reservoirs was depleted this spring, the city began to restrict water supply in different areas for several days at a time.

The city also began to encourage residents to save water, recommending that they install low-flow showerheads, fix leaky taps and check for leaks in toilets.

The city government heavily subsidises the cost of water, and Ramon Aguirre, the official in charge of the water supply, said last month he would lobby the city assembly to drop the subsidy for large consumers. Homes pay only 15 per cent of what it costs to supply their water.

Last week, after the most intense downpour in ten years, reporters immediately asked Mr Aguirre whether all the rain would ease the shortage. Butnature had played a trick. For the rain to enhance the water supply, it had to fall west of Mexico City, over the mountains where the res-ervoirs of the system were built.

Instead, it fell on the city's streets, got swept down into the drains, and eventually emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. "It would be difficult for a few weeks of rain to compensate for months of drought," Mr Aguirre said.