The Future of Water for North America: Case Study - Mexico City, Part II

Duncan Wood

Office of the William E. Simon Chair

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Mexico City’s growing water problems. In the time since then, the city has suffered even more problems, as water supplies have been cut off to a number of different areas of the city and the broader valley of Mexico. These interruptions in service have been caused by much needed maintenance work that has been undertaken by public authorities on the Cutzamala water distribution system, a system that is responsible for 30% of Mexico City’s water supply. The water in question comes 322 kilometers from the state of Michoacán, and years of neglect and poor maintenance have meant that a major break in the system was inevitable at some point.

This occurred recently, compounding the problems caused by low rainfall this year, and meant that a number of city delegaciones (boroughs) have been without water for extended periods. Municipal authorities have compensated by distributing drinking water by truck, but the inconvenience caused by these recurring interruptions is obviously resented by the local population. Although service was restored to most delegaciones in Mexico City by Sunday evening, the problem appears to have been passed on to the nation’s most heavily populated municipality, Ecatepec. There more than 220 neighborhoods, with a population totaling more than 600 thousand, will be without water for two days. The Cutzamala reservoir itself has suffered terribly this year from low rainfall and overuse. By September its levels were at 14.7% of capacity.

It will be interesting in the coming months to see if popular opinion begins to call for a shake-up of the water services in Mexico City. Residents and businesses must acknowledge that more investment is needed in the building of infrastructure to ensure water supplies, and that new regulations punishing the wastage of water are implemented and enforced. A few years ago Mexico embarked on a program to switch over to energy saving light bulbs and electrical appliances. This program has achieved great success thanks to the desire of poorer families to save money. Just as with electricity, more efforts need to be made to convince the population that saving water is important and makes sense. But it is here that pricing becomes an issue.

Clearly, one of the solutions that needs to be considered by the authorities is the raising of water tariffs. It is true that in most of the world water pricing is problematical but at present Mexican residential customers pay a laughable fee for their water. My own water bill for an apartment in Mexico City comes to a grand total of 44 pesos ($3.30 US) every two months. This means that people take little care about water conservation, and leaks in the system are ignored. Forcing people to pay more for their water will ensure that they take greater care over its conservation, but it is also a desperately sensitive political issue. Raising water tariffs will impose heavy costs on poorer families, and a fair system of subsidies or progressive pricing policies needs to be developed. Whatever happens, we should expect water to become a prominent political issue in the Mexico City and national elections in 2012.

Flickr photo by Wester and used under the Creative Commons license