SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The rainy season's arrived in Mexico City, and that is welcome because for months the city was facing a massive water shortage. But for many residents, the rain has just made water problems worse. Emily Green reports.
EMILY GREEN, BYLINE: After months of warnings that Mexico City could run out of water, the return of rain is a welcome sight. You can almost hear a collective sigh of relief among Mexico City residents because the rain is filling the reservoirs that provide a large portion of the city's water supply. But rain is just one factor in a massive and complex crisis. I take a taxi to see Maria Cristina Pelaez.
MARIA CRISTINA PELAEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: (Speaking Spanish).
PELAEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: (Speaking Spanish).
Pelaez lives in Ecatepec, a working-class city on the capital's northern edge. The last time I visited her, in February, the water that came out of her tap was dark, brown and smelled of sewage. Now, when Pelaez turns on the tap, the only thing that comes out is a sputtering sound.
PELAEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: Now, no water comes out of the tap, she says, not even dirty water. So she leaves buckets out to collect the rainwater. And the rainy season, instead of alleviating her water problems, has triggered an even bigger concern, flooding. When it rains, the drainage system collapses, and the water comes in from the street into our houses, she says. We walk over to our neighbor's house, where 77-year-old Hernan Lara lives.
HERNAN LARA: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: (Speaking Spanish).
He invites me into his house, which has flooded twice in the past week after heavy rains.
LARA: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: He says water from the street flooded the bathroom, a patio and all of the bedrooms in the house. Everything that was in the bedroom closet is now on the bed - clothes, suitcases, books, even a sewing machine.
LARA: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: He says he and his wife cried when their house flooded. Meanwhile, they're still buying water every week to drink and take showers because nothing comes out of their tap. The situation feels nothing short of a apocalyptic. So what's going on? How can Mexico City have flooding and a water shortage?
ARMANDO ALONSO BELTRAN: The answer is chaos.
GREEN: Armando Alonso Beltran is an executive member of the Water Commission for the State of Mexico, which includes Ecatepec. He blames bad infrastructure.
BELTRAN: Most of it doesn't work. Which amount doesn't work? Eighty percent. Eighty percent doesn't work. So the first action is to repair what we already have.
GREEN: He says his first priority is to fix leaks in the pipelines and to update dilapidated treatment plants so that wastewater is cleaned and reused instead of discharged into rivers and lakes.
BELTRAN: Many people say, let's bring water. Let's produce more water. Let's make the wells more effective. But first, let's fix the huge problem that we have, that we don't treat water, that we're losing it.
GREEN: For decades, the city has instead shipped in water from far away reservoirs and pumped out water from an aquifer. But a prolonged drought has left the far-away reservoirs extremely dry. And Mexico City is pumping so much water out of the aquifer that the ground below the city is sinking and below-ground water pipes and sewage systems are falling apart.
LORETA CASTRO REGUERA: The amount of water that drains cannot be efficiently drained through the sort of pipes that are under the streets of the urban fabric.
GREEN: Loreta Castro Reguera is an architect designing for water in Mexico City. She says a second issue is that Mexico City was built on top of a lake that was drained, which means the soil beneath the city is mostly clay. So even when it rains a lot, clay can't absorb the water.
CASTRO REGUERA: It's not that we don't have enough rain. Actually, we have quite a lot of rain. It's just that we're really mismanaging our water.
GREEN: Urban expansion has exacerbated the problem. Castro advocates for solutions that involve capturing and reusing rainwater. In Ecatepec, I visit a park that Castro designed with her firm. The park is carved into flat terraces and filled with volcanic rock. The idea is that when it rains, the water stays in the park instead of spilling into the streets below, says Castro's colleague, Alan Perez.
ALAN PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: He says the terraces are like pools that hold the rainwater and then filter it to the aquifer below, slowly enough that the clay can absorb it. It's one of many initiatives that experts hope will alleviate the dual problem of water scarcity and flooding in this megalapolis. The question is, will those solutions come fast enough?
For NPR News, I'm Emily Green in Mexico City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.