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Just casually throwing in 'overpopulation' when in so many places, water for actual human needs like drinking, bathing and even washing clothes, is a tiny fraction compared to much more wasteful things like grass, America's largest crop.
I live in a dry bit of the American west and municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture is often not very efficient because of old water rules that give water to things like hobby farms when real farms downstream don't get what they need.
100% this. or 95%. When you say "grass, America's largest crop" I assume you are referring to lawns, but actually I think your last point is the crucial one: "...municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture..."
California has plenty of water for it's people. If you add up ALL residential, commercial and industrial use, including all outdoor landscape watering, baseball fields, golf courses, etc - it all adds up to around 10-20% of the water used (depending on rainfall).
Where does the rest (80-90%) of California's water go? Agriculture. Half the produce of which is exported to other states and countries. Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? And about half of that rice is exported, much to Asia (!!)
California is rather like Saudi Arabia, with the farmers pumping out all the water and selling it in the form of agricultural produce.
But take a shorter shower please! And you don't really NEED to flush that toilet.
The "real farms" (Ie beef, dairy, grains, corns) you mentioned are absorbing on the order of 80 percent of the water, not commercial and private lawns/grass.
Hobby farms with several cows and a shop that sells maple syrup consum eabout 1/10000th a percent of water as for example con-agra suppliers, nestle etc.
There is the constantly rotating story of "this one small family farm in colorado uses more of california's water than LA county". That is a LARGE conglomerate farm which is part of the corporate farm problem, not mom and pop farms.
I assure you;In the USA specifically, your families ability to eat and provide food for the things we eat WILL be more important in the long run than bathing or washing clothes, until we decide that beef proteins aren't the msot sustainable.
While that's true it has very little to do with Mexico City's specific issues. It's at 7300 feet elevation surrounded by a ring of mountains that keep out a lot of the rain and moisture, and there's already not that much agriculture going on given the limited space.
I hate when they promote the use of low-flow toilets which save 1-2 gallons when compared to irrigation of farm land measured in acre-inches of water. A acre-inch of water is 27,000 gallons. Corn needs 12 acre-inches to grow to maturity, or over 325,000 per acre.
that sounds a lot like where i live (bend, or)
I live in Mexico. About 30 mins from where I live, Amazon and others have built data centers (presumably for AI) which consume water. This is affecting agriculture in a region that is already suffering from drought.
https://www.context.news/ai/thirsty-data-centres-spring-up-i...
I would imagine you are talking about Queretaro. Google and Microsoft also have data centers there.
This is a thing that has been more than a decade in the making, mostly because Queretaro does not have seismic activity and is only a couple of hours north of Mexico City.
While the water sources are completely different, both regions are prone to intense water seasons and, in the last couple of years, intense droughts.
More specifically, Queretaro is a semi-desert, so this behavior is a bit more expected.
Aside: Coming from personal experience I don't think that current agricultural methods are the best and are pron to wasting water, at least what I remember from Queretaro
Genuinely curious, how much water do data centers consume? I would think they might need a good amount of water at startup, but any use would be in a closed system. Am I misunderstanding their water use? Do they lose a lot of it to the atmosphere somehow?
One thing I'd like more info on is in what ways Nestlé and other water companies have contributed to the problem.
I've long heard that they lobby to prevent the local Government in CDMX from providing potable water in order to protect their bottled water and water-delivery business, but I actually don't know how well substantiated those accusations are.
On the positive side of things, Mexico City gets a ton of rain during the wet season which can be harvested with rooftop collectors.
When I lived in Oaxaca it was a massive issue with portable water only being available through private means from private springs in the nearby area. All hotels and tourist attractions had access to water, while the rest went without, some for months.
Nezahualcoyotl/Neza, Naucalpan, and Ecatepec (the municipalities mentioned) are not in Mexico City proper.
They along with Iztapalapa are the former slum towns. How much of the water crisis can be attributed to the fact that these were all unplanned muncipalities, with split governance between Mexico State and CDMX
Edit: Yep, looks like only 15% of water in Mexico is allocated to human consumption and the rest is for agriculture and manufacturing [0].
Now I'm curious how many seats in Estado Mexico's assembly are within the CDMX metro and how many are not. If majority of them aren't within the CDMX metro then it's the classic democracy dilemma you see in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc as well.
[0] - https://www.axios.com/2024/11/26/mexico-water-crisis-claudia...
For comparison, about 13% of water in US is allocated to "human consumption" with the rest for ag and mfg [https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...].
Edit 3: My hypothesis about state impact doesn't hold (forgot that Mexico follows the same system as the US of direct governer elections plus a mix of direct and proportional representation).
That said, now I'm curious about how public funds are disbursed to localities. How do local municipalities and unincorporated areas get services funded in Mexico?
It is never mentioned that electricity from fossil fuel generation consumes a lot of water.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power generators are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals and account for about 40% of total water withdrawals in the United States:https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453
Thermoelectric power plants—including coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants—boil water to create steam, which then spins a turbine to generate electricity. Cooling water is passed through the steam leaving the turbine to cool and condense the steam. This step reduces the steam's exit pressure and recaptures its heat, which is then used to preheat fluid entering the boiler.
U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015:https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698
I live in Mexico City and a large part of this is the odd compulsion that chilangos have to put concrete over absolutely everything. It rains but there is very little unpaved surfaces to absorb any of that water and return it to underground sources. I've had friends and family members inexplicably rip out nice gardens at their houses and replace it with paved surfaces. My in-laws have a large yard that only has a few square meters of unpaved ground left. My street has flooding problems during intense rains every couple years in large part because no water can be absorbed anywhere and if the small street drains get clogged with branches it is a disaster.
The choices are either pavement or grass. Open ground creates dust and mud.
The reason why 1st world cities look "cleaner" is because every single sq inch is either paved or turfed with grass.
Off topic: This page is beautiful. Love it when people use magazine-style layouts on the web.
Hi all -- I'm Long Lead's editor, John Patrick Pullen. Thanks for the compliments (those of you who have) and for those who have other thoughts, we hear you.
I'm personally a big fan of reader-mode on browsers, myself, but at Long Lead, we think there's an opportunity for a new kind of journalism, one that takes time to produce and relies on design as much as it does editorial and art. You can't stuff that in a reader-mode — and really we don't want to.
We're a journalism studio. What's a journalism studio, you ask? Well, what's a film studio? You know -- they produce feature films that look great in the right or best contexts. Watching on a phone isn't as good as a tablet, which isn't as good as a TV or a projector. Similarly, our features journalism is built to scale (we do actually build separate mobile layouts) but isn't designed to leave our site. Also, all of them are bespoke builds made to support the reporting that they're housing, because every feature has its own needs. We work in every medium, too, from podcasts to documentaries to photo features like this one.
We believe there's an opportunity for this kind of journalism, because it used to exist. Remember a time when magazines arrived in your inbox with gorgeous photos and fact-checked features that took months to make? That's what we're doing, but online.
I hope you follow us and our work. We have some exciting stuff ahead. The best way to know when our next feature drops is by subscribing to our newsletter at www.longlead.com/newsletters.
Thanks so much for reading!
It's pretty for sure, but it breaks reader view which I use a lot, so I don't like it. also it requires a lot of unnecessary scrolling to read since the text is broken up so much
It's annoying to read on my phone. Text and pictures are moving at different speeds than I'm scrolling.
Pretty stylish.
Wouldn't want to read this on a phone though I tell you hwhat.
Why on earth is jppullen's comment dead?
Ugh no. My scroll wheel finger hurts because they are allergic to a simple text flow. I hate it when people get too fancy with this shit
Been in Mexico almost 7 years- it's common knowledge, you don't drink the tap water, ever. The destitute who can't afford bottled water might be the exception.
I’ve lived here for 3 years and been drinking the tap for about a year. I’ve got lots of friends with “filters” that don’t actually do anything for microbes, and they drink that water. Anyways, very very few people can’t afford a garrafón.
The majority of the world has non-potable tap water.
I kept hoping they'd provide a reference of Tenochtitlan. Possibly the most striking thing I learned when visiting Mexico City.
they did!
>Mexico City was built on top of what used to be a large body of water, which would make its water shortage appear ironic if it wasn’t so tragic. In the early 1300s, the Mexica (or Aztecs) settled on an island in the middle of what used to be a huge lake called Texcoco, the largest among five intertwined lakes.
But after the arrival of the Spaniards, the city started to expand, and the urban sprawl caused the lake system to dry up. By the early 20th century, the rivers feeding the once-rich lake zone were put into pipelines to make way for motor vehicles. Very little is left of the lakes, while the rivers have become practically invisible.
Ok, so nobody seam to talk about the privatisation of water in Mexico.
It is at the root of the problem. Coca Cola is the most known absurd operator of this industry. National water is too cheap and used by private company for nearly nothing. Vicente Fox was a president of Coca Cola company in Mexico before becoming the president of Mexico, you can guess the « colonisation » was easier by that. (Coca Cola isn't alone, it is just the most known, Danone, the French company is also plundering Mexico water for example, AI datacenter too, ...).
Coca cola is known to be responsible for the drying of Monterrey and San Cristobal de Las Casas.
I have an honest question here, that is a bit off-topic:
When I look at the pictures, I see most people are overweight (some are outright fat and obese). Is that just by accident on these particular pictures with a tiny sample size? Or is that a problem in Mexico?
I'm from Europe and when I think about Mexico, I do not have overweight people in my mind, instead a relatively healthy diet of local produce. Is that a misconception?
Yes that is a misconception: https://data.worldobesity.org/country/mexico-139/#data_preva...
"The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi
I've heard from a Mexican buddy that Coca Cola is cheaper in Mexico than drinking water.
An important detail that the article has somehow left out. Texcoco, one of Mexico City's main lakes is salty. The Aztecs built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake from the rain water of the effluents.
My goodness my eyes really must suck. Had to zoom into that article multiple times in order to read it (especially the photo captions).
Will any of the feet of snow that dropped on Colorado Cali and Utah make it down to CDMX supply basins?
Also Valle De Bravo is the Hamptons of Mexico
Nuclear desalination. We could have had this decades ago, the real atoms for peace dividend. The boomers are stupid though, and the fact that the world has freshwater shortages and we have to consider carbon emissions (to whatever degree it will be a problem) from electricity generation is entirely their fault. And they are still squandering this gift.
How are we doing with next-gen solar desalination?
Or has all science been defunded at this point?
https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-desalination-system-inexpens...
I know some US warships have massive desalination plants onboard, are they nuclear powered? Can we use the new micro-nuclear-reactors to power those for cities?
Mexico City is having a serious problem right now
Interesting article.
Terrible craftmansship in the HTML/CSS department.
Mexico city is doomed, to what exactly and when, is an open question, and perhaps it's where it's position on the doomometer compared to anywhere else, is pertenent. It serves "us" as a distraction of our own doomomedness and why not, my Mexican friends, are (jovialy) derissive about any number of things happening in, redacted, redacted, gringredacted, places.