Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Mexico City Under Water
Mexico City was built on a swamp of deep clay. The city is pumping from the aquifer below much more than the natural recharge, so the clay is contracting and the city is sinking about 10 centimeters a year. The dictator Porfirio Diaz built the first drain the chronic inundations the city was subjected to, the Gran Canal del Desagüe, which was supplemented by several Emisores (draining channels), none of which is maintained. These drains are also used to discharge the sewage produced by the city's 20 million inhabitants. There is a problem: the city has been sinking and the draining channel's original slope has been lost. The Emisor Central was built to discharge 170 cu m per second, but now it can discharge only 120. A fifty year rain will require 350, which is not there, so Mexico City will be flooded with water and sewage. "Fortunately" - there is 60 year drought. I worked with TAHAL in Mexico, and wonder if they are still there. The water planning work required could maintain TAHAL for a generation.
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9 comments:
If Mexico did not have its ongoing political problems, they could probably handle their own planning.
If a solution to Mexico's political problems could be found Mexico could easily have a GDP 2-3x what it currently is.
In fact, I remember reading that Mexico City has twenty million people because of the extreme centralization of the Mexican state.
The city is sinking in the mud and becoming a death trap. 20 million people. Nothing is being done. Think of it.
Worse than the potential flooding is the nearby volcano that overlooks the city. Let me give you a comparison, the New Orleans Metropolitan area had 1.3 million people prior to Katrina, whereas Mexico City has 20 million.
New Orleans apparently had a reputation as a badly managed city prior to Katrina, as Thomas W Chittum remarked in Civil War 2, so apparently the looting and mayhem should have been expected. Now Imagine MC, which is as big as it is solely because of the corruption and centralization of the Mexican state.
Personally, I think that the best solution is to partition Mexico into two or more countries and let each work out its own solutions to its problems.
Let me restate my point differently. The same political failure that prevents the construction of proper drainage canals is also the same failure that lures millions of Mexicans into Mexico City looking for work.
Here is the wiki page on the volcano overlooking Mexico City.
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I saw a video several years ago that stated that the Mexico City water system lost one third of all water that entered it.
J, I did some googling on "the Gran Canal del Desagüe" and found that the US National Academy of Sciences did a report on Mexico City's water supply back in 1995. The report, without illustrations has been transcribed and posted on the website of the University of Texas here.
Funding for the report seems to have come from a variety of US foundations, such as the Ford Foundation and various US and Mexican government departments.
Mexico City loses about 40% of the water provided. They bring most of the water from 200 km.
The Aztecs built their beautiful city on islands in a big lake. It has now developed to a disaster. I would move the city to another place.
Mexico City is a prime example of an urban hellhole. The place is truly sickening.
Agreed.
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