Drought of dams aggravates water crisis in northern Mexico

When a modern boulevard on the banks of the La Boca dam was inaugurated towards the end of 2021 in the northern town of Santiago, Mexico, the merchant Leticia Rodríguez celebrated the work confident that it would give her restaurant a new impetus.

Months later, their celebration turned into a nightmare. The high temperatures and a severe drought that hit the north of the country dried up to less than 95% the capacity of La Boca, which despite being a small dam, of 39 million cubic meters, has a strategic importance due to that supplies the south of the industrial city of Monterrey.

Boats stranded between long expanses of broken land, a floating restaurant buried in what was once a side bed of the reservoir, and dozens of ducks digging desperately on an increasingly diminished shore in search of something to eat is now what can be found in the mouth.

Monterrey, capital of the state of Nuevo León, today faces one of the biggest water crises in more than three decades, which has forced its five million inhabitants to live under daily water cuts of more than 12 hours —in some cases up to weeks—and having to replenish cisterns and underground wells, which has exacerbated unrest among residents and street protests.

To the problems generated by the water crisis have been added the economic impacts that have reached many small businesses in the tourism and services sector that had to close after the scarcity of water scared tourists away and their income fell, which left them in dozens of workers on the street.

Difficulties with water are not exclusive to Monterrey. Faced with the worsening of supplies of the vital liquid in several regions of the north and center of the country, the National Water Commission of Mexico put into effect this week an emergency declaration agreement to apply temporary measures that guarantee the supply of water in different regions according to what the Drought Monitor reports, which has recognized that almost half of the country faces drought problems.

The drought that hits part of Mexico is associated with the La Niña meteorological phenomenon, which generates a lot or very little rain depending on the conditions of each region and its effects have been intensified by climate change.

Monterrey’s water crisis escalated this week after the Cerro Prieto dam reached less than 0.5% of its capacity, which left the industrial hub without its second largest reservoir and depending on the El Cuchillo dam, which is 46 % of its capacity, according to architect Juan Ignacio Barragán, general director of the state agency Servicios de Agua y Drainaje de Monterrey, telling The Associated Press.

The research professor at the School of Engineering and Sciences of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Aldo Iván Ramírez, stated that although the crisis is worrying, it is “much better than in many other locations in the country,” adding that in this case the alarms due to the importance of the city as an industrial hub that generates about 12% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Ramírez recalled that in 1998 and 2013 Monterrey faced other important episodes of drought, but now the situation has become more complicated because Cerro Prieto was lost and it depends exclusively on the El Cuchillo dam, which has a capacity of 1,200 million cubic meters.

To help in the contingency, the industrial sector of the state of Nuevo León promised this week to contribute 24.7 million cubic meters of groundwater that they have in concession, while the agricultural sector announced that it will cede half of its groundwater rights. in favor of the state.

The authorities and specialists anticipate that the coming weeks will be the most critical and recognize that if the rainy season, scheduled for the third week of August, is delayed, the water cuts and supplies through cisterns will have to be extended.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged on Monday that the situation in Monterrey “is serious” and for this reason he asked for more support from the private sector, both from those who have water for irrigation and from soft drink or brewery companies that in some cases are already giving up water but in others not”.

“We must continue contributing and even stop production and dedicate all the water that is required to the people,” he said.

The collateral impacts of this crisis have already begun to be felt. This was recognized by Rodríguez, who is a native of Santiago, a small town near Monterrey, and owner of a restaurant located in front of La Boca for two decades. The merchant reported that the surroundings of the dam, which used to be full of hundreds of tourists who flocked to the place every weekend to go boating, canoeing or skiing, are now desolate.

“Since they built the boardwalk it was like a curse,” said Rodríguez, 54, while pointing to the abandoned structure of a restaurant that operated on the waters of La Boca that had to close this year after most of the dam was emptied. and the tourists stopped coming.

“For me this is worse than in the pandemic because at least in the pandemic there were people,” said the merchant, recounting that during the months that the forty was imposed due to the coronavirus, she was able to keep her restaurant afloat thanks to orders for take away, but when the dam dried up, the customers left and their sales plummeted, forcing her to lay off most of her employees in April and take over, together with her husband and children, the management of the premises.

“The only hope is that it rains. That it arrives like this is a tail of a hurricane so that the dam is recovered because that is what is killing us the most, ”Rodríguez said, acknowledging that the future of his only source of income is uncertain.

Sitting in one of the chairs of an old floating dock, which closed when the dam dried up, Juan Pérez, a 65-year-old resident of Santiago, admitted that he is still not used to the closure of the place where he worked for years taking tourists to ride in the boats. Pérez was one of the 60 workers who became unemployed when the boat business went bankrupt. Now the humble inhabitant survives by working as a cleaning employee for the mayor’s office in Santiago.

“It’s sad to see this like this… it’s worse than a cemetery,” Pérez said after recalling the hubbub generated by the hundreds of tourists who flocked to the dam every weekend and how the festive atmosphere was replaced by desolation.

Given the worsening of the crisis, the authorities have intensified efforts to search for water sources. This is how, since last weekend, the placement of a floating horizontal pumping system began to try to remove about 400 liters of water per second from La Boca to take it through pipes to Monterrey, reported engineer Raúl Ramírez, whose company is working on system installation.

“This was something that was reported since last year, about the possibility of this happening, and unfortunately as a society we did not listen, we did not want to understand,” said Ramírez in the middle of an arid terrain, which was until a few months ago the center of La Boca, and where now a group of employees from his company are advancing in the placement of the pumping system that will be active up to a certain limit to preserve the aquatic fauna that still remains in the place, according to the engineer.

With the loss of Cerro Prieto, which is a medium-sized dam with a capacity of 300 million cubic meters that supplied water to about 10% of the inhabitants of Monterrey, the picture tends to get more complicated, admitted Barragán.

Under normal conditions, 60% of the city’s water came from dams, and 40% was obtained from deep wells, shallow wells and some filter tunnels, but now that situation has changed.

Regarding the contingency plans that will be applied in the face of the loss of Cerro Prieto, the general director of the state agency explained that in the next two weeks the authorities will work intensely to bring water pipes to the most remote and highest areas that constitute 8% of the neighborhoods of Monterrey and thus ensure a basic supply.

The water crisis faced by Monterrey took most of its inhabitants by surprise, who did not even have tinacos or small tanks to store water. Now many have begun to take action to save water and get the most out of it.

“I think this crisis has made people think a lot. I would not like to see a hurricane come and that this crisis is alleviated and that everyone forgets it because that is the worst thing that can happen to us,” concluded the academic.

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