Last week, a senior official from the Government of Mexico City recognized in an informal conversation with journalists that the central issue for the next elections in the capital will not be security, public transport or the price of the basic food basket, but the Water.
All the above problems have been on the political agenda before and solutions have been sought with better or worse success.
But to solve the water program they are all improvised proposals in the face of an unprecedented problem that every month adds more towns and neighborhoods drying up.
The situation can be extrapolated to the rest of the country.
In the last 15 days, the number of municipalities with some type of drought went from 571 to 764, according to the Drought Monitor in Mexico.
By States, Aguascalientes, Baja California and Querétaro, have all of their localities in this situation.
The monitoring service of the National Water Commission (Conagua) revealed that more than 70% of Mexico has some type of drought.
According to Conagua, the north of the country is the region most affected by the drought, causing the dams to begin to reduce their capacity.
Among the main entities are Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango and Baja California, in addition to Nuevo León, whose case has been the one that has caused the most shock at the national level, added to the strategies of the current governor, Samuel García, who have not achieved counteract the effects of water scarcity.
Nevertheless,
The case that most worries us at the moment is that of Baja California, since almost 100% of the territory is under drought conditions;
precisely 99.7%.
At the national level, the rains continue below the historical average and the forecast for this year.
The precipitation deficit from January 1 to July 17 amounted to 12.9%.
Meanwhile, 47.6% of the territory registered some level of drought on July 15, 19.6 points more than on the same date in 2021.
A duck wanders in the Miguel Gómez dam, known as La Boca, in Nuevo León, Mexico.ALFREDO ESTRELLA (AFP)
According to the latest edition of the Drought Monitor in Mexico, as of July 15, 47.6% of the country's surface was experiencing drought, 0.2 points more than a fortnight before and 1.6 points more than on 31 of March.
“During the first half of July 2022, above-average rains were observed along the Mexican Pacific coast, the Sierra Madre Occidental and the south of the country;
while in the rest of the national territory there were rains below the average, the greatest deficits were observed in the region of Las Huastecas”, indicates the report.
“Precipitation deficits and warmer than normal conditions, mainly in the north-central and northeastern states, caused an increase in areas with severe, extreme and/or exceptional drought in these regions.
In the center of the national territory, the areas with moderate to severe drought also increased”, he warns.
Mexico has been in more than three and a half months with around half of its territory affected by some level of drought.
This water crisis is expressed in various regions of the country, in a context in which 20% of the territory, mainly the south-southeast, receives around 80% of the country's annual rainfall, while the center-north, which it is equivalent to 80% of the national territory, it receives only around 20% of the pluvial precipitation.
Meanwhile, the main dams in the country registered a very slight recovery during the last week.
The Technical Committee for the Operation of Hydraulic Works reported that the 210 dams in the country added a storage of 56,207 million cubic meters of water, 623 million more than on July 12.
The figure, however, is still 11% below the historical average for the date.
The number of dams at 100% fill increased from three to five, while 116 are less than half full.
Conagua reported that so far this year, and due to the insufficiency of liquid in various entities, 24 operations have been carried out in which more than 76 million liters of drinking water have been delivered in Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa,
The expert points out that the degree of pressure on the bodies of water is extracted up to 40% of the water that is renewed.
In this context, the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City stands out, since more water is extracted from it than is renewed;
and even requires additional volumes to meet the needs of different users.
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