In Some Poor CDMX Barrios, Water a Rare Commodity Agence France-Presse | |
go to original April 26, 2017 |
More than two million people have been affected by water shortages across Mexico’s capital. (Al Jazeera)
In a teeming, hardscrabble neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City, Virginia Solis spends a big part of her day hauling sloshing buckets to her home -- one of tens of thousands in the capital without running water.
Solis lives in the shadow of a ruddy mountain on the sprawling city's far east side, in an impoverished district called Iztapalapa. There are no water pipes in her neighborhood. Instead, tanker trucks deliver water to a cistern at the end of her street once every three days. Solis and her neighbors then haul it home in plastic buckets.
The Sisyphean work of providing her family's water supply has made her ruthlessly economical with every drop. "When water makes you suffer, you don't waste a bit of it," she said. "If I needed to flush the toilet right now, I'd wash some laundry first, then reuse the water."
Her neighbor Norma Calderon oversees the neighborhood's ad hoc water delivery system. It's another thankless job. There are simply too many people lining up for every 200-liter (50-gallon) cistern filled by the tanker trucks. "One cistern is tiny. There are families here with seven, eight, nine people," she said.
Iztapalapa is the poorest and most populous area in Mexico City - 1.8 million of the capital's 8.8 million people live here. It is also the one that suffers most from a lack of water. Even in neighborhoods that have running water, it often doesn't work.
But Iztapalapa isn't alone. Across the city, more than half a million homes lack a daily water supply, and nearly 50,000 have no running water.
Read the rest at MENAFN
Related: Clean Drinking Water Coming to Mexico City Metro Stations (goCDMX)
Related: It Starts with Water. This Is How You Prevent Disease, Enable Education and Pursue Peace (H2OpenDoors Expedition)
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