In Mexico City, more and more residents are watching their taps go dry for hours a day. Even when water does flow, it often comes out dark brown and smells noxious. A former political leader is asking the public to “prioritize essential actions for survival” as the city’s key reservoirs run dry. Meanwhile, 2,000 miles south in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, reservoir levels are falling just as fast, and the city government has implemented rotating water shutoffs. The mayor has begged families to shower together and leave the city on weekends to cut down on water usage.
In warning about the potential for a Day Zero in the water system, both cities are referencing the famous example set by Cape Town, South Africa, which made global headlines in 2018 when it almost ran out of water. The city was months away from a total collapse of its reservoir system when it mounted an unprecedented public awareness campaign and rolled out strict fees on water consumption. These measures succeeded in pulling the city back from the brink.
In warning about the potential for a Day Zero in the water system, both cities are referencing the famous example set by Cape Town, South Africa, which made global headlines in 2018 when it almost ran out of water. The city was months away from a total collapse of its reservoir system when it mounted an unprecedented public awareness campaign and rolled out strict fees on water consumption. These measures succeeded in pulling the city back from the brink.
To really have control over the future of its water, a city also needs to have control over its physical infrastructure. But Mexico City loses almost 40 percent of its municipal water to leakage from pipes and canals, one of the highest rates in the world. This means that residential conservation efforts can only have a limited effect on the overall water budget, according to Perló Cohen. The city has also seen a rise in water theft from canals and reservoir systems: Organized crime groups siphon off public water and use it to grow avocados or resell it to water-starved households at a high markup. Locals call this huachicoleo de agua, using a term coined to describe fuel theft.
While the city government of Bogotá has both the public trust and the political power to implement rotating water shutoffs — which has helped protect reservoir levels — the city’s conservation campaign is lacking another crucial ingredient: enthusiasm. As in Cape Town, residents shared novel ways to reduce water usage during the first week of the crisis, but since then the local media has stopped devoting as much attention to the shutoffs. Water usage has begun to tick back up.
Alejandra Lopez Rodgriguez, a policy advocate at the Nature Conservancy in Mexico City, said that the government of that city could also fix its severe leakage problem and build wastewater treatment plants — if officials choose to prioritize those projects.
“We have resources and we have access to financing,” she told Grist. “There are resources available. It just also takes a will and an interest to want to invest in these issues.”