Cruel drought in Mexico | “Here, you have to run after the water”

Mexico, or much of it, lacks water.

Due to extreme drought, taps are dry all over the country. Nearly two-thirds of municipalities face a water shortage that forces residents to queue for hours for government water deliveries.

The lack of water has become so extreme that angry residents are blocking highways and kidnapping city workers to demand additional supplies.

The figures that illustrate this crisis are alarming. In July, 8 of Mexico’s 32 states were experiencing extreme or moderate drought, meaning 1,546 of the country’s 2,463 municipalities faced water shortages, according to the National Water Commission.

As of mid-July, about 48% of Mexico’s territory was suffering from drought, according to the commission, compared to about 28% of the country’s territory at the same time last year.

While establishing a link between a single drought and human-caused climate change requires analysis, scientists have no doubt that global warming can alter rainfall patterns around the world and increases the likelihood of droughts.

Across the border, in recent years, much of the western half of the United States has experienced drought, with conditions ranging from moderate to severe. For the region, this period now constitutes the two driest decades in 1200 years.

The crisis is particularly acute in Monterrey, Mexico’s second city and one of its most important economic hubs, where the entire metropolitan area of ​​about 5 million people is affected by drought, officials said. Parts of Monterrey have been without water for 75 days, leading many schools to close ahead of the planned summer vacation.

The situation in the city has become so serious that a passing journalist could not find drinking water on sale in several stores, including a Walmart.

Buckets, too, are in short supply in local stores — or sold for astronomical prices — as Monterrey residents scramble to collect containers to collect water from government trucks dispatched to neighborhoods the driest.

Some locals empty trash cans to bring water home, with children scrambling to help carry what can be 450 pounds of water.

While Monterrey’s poorest neighborhoods are hardest hit, the crisis affects everyone, including the wealthy.

“Here, you have to run after water,” said Claudia Muñiz, 38, whose home is often without running water for a week. “In a moment of desperation, people explode,” she said of the violence that erupted as people fought for what little water was available.

Rare rains

Monterrey is in northern Mexico, the driest region of the country, which has seen its population increase in recent years with the economic boom. But the region’s typically arid climate struggles to sustain the population, with climate change reducing the little rainfall the region enjoys.

Monterrey residents can now walk on the bottom of the reservoir created by the Cerro Prieto Dam, which was once one of the city’s main sources of water. The reservoir was also a major tourist attraction promoted by the local government for its lively waterfront restaurants and for fishing, boating, and water skiing.

The amount of rain that fell in July in parts of the state of Nuevo León, which borders Texas and whose capital is Monterrey, was only 10% of the monthly average recorded since 1960, according to Juan Ignacio Barragán Villarreal, general manager of the city’s water agency.

“In March, it didn’t rain a single drop in the entire state,” he said, adding that it was the first March without rain since the government began keeping records in 1960.

9 million liters distributed every day

Today, the government distributes a total of 9 million liters of water per day to 400 neighborhoods. Every day, “pipas”, large trucks filled with water and distribution pipes, crisscross Monterrey and its suburbs to meet the needs of the driest neighborhoods, often illegal camps where the poorest inhabitants live.

Alejandro Casas, a tanker truck driver, has worked for the government for five years. He says that in his early days he supported the city fire department and was called once or twice a month to deliver water to the scene of a fire. He often spent his working days staring at his phone.

But since Monterrey’s water shortage became so acute that taps began to run dry in January, he now works every day, making up to 10 daily trips to different neighborhoods to supply water to around 200 families in each trip.

When Mr. Casas arrives, a long queue winds through the streets of the neighborhood, people waiting their turn. Some families carry containers that can hold 200 liters, or 53 gallons, and wait in the sun all afternoon before finally receiving water at midnight.

The water he delivers may be all the family gets for a week.

No one watches the queues, so fights break out, with residents of other communities trying to squeeze through instead of waiting for trucks to arrive in their neighborhood days later. Residents are allowed to take home the amount of water their containers can hold.

In May, Mr. Casas’ truck was stormed by several young men who climbed into the passenger seat and threatened him as he was delivering water in the San Ángel neighborhood.

“They spoke to me in a very threatening tone,” Mr. Casas said, explaining that they demanded that he drive the truck to their neighborhood to distribute water. “They told me that if we didn’t go where they wanted, they were going to kidnap us. »

Casas headed to the other neighborhood, filled the residents’ buckets, and was released.

María De Los Ángeles, 45, was born and raised in Ciénega de Flores, a town near Monterrey. She says the water crisis is straining her family and her business.

The crisis, she says, is pushing her into bankruptcy — the tree nursery she owns is her family’s only means of subsistence and requires more water resources than the occasional running water from the taps of his house.

“I have to buy a water tank every week, which costs me 1,200 pesos,” or US$60, from a private supplier, she says. That’s about half of his weekly income of $120.

“We can no longer deal with this situation,” said Mr.^me From Los Angeles.

Small business owners like M^me De Los Ángeles are frustrated with having to fend for themselves, while Monterrey’s big industries are able to operate normally. The factories can draw 50 million cubic meters of water a year thanks to federal concessions that give them special access to the city’s aquifers.

The government is struggling to respond to the crisis

To try to alleviate future shortages, the state is investing about $97 million to build a sewage treatment plant and plans to buy water from a desalination plant being built in a neighboring state.

The government has spent about $82 million to hire more trucks to distribute water, pay additional drivers and dig more wells, according to Barragán, director general of the water agency.

Nuevo León State Governor Samuel García recently urged the world to act together to tackle climate change, as it is beyond the capacity of any single government.

“The climate crisis has caught up with us,” García wrote on Twitter. Today we have to take care of the environment, it’s a matter of life and death. »

This article was originally published in The New York Times.