Elaine Meinel Supkis
Mexico City used to be a floating garden filled with flowers and canals, the Venice of the New World. Now, like in Iraq, Mexico is draining the last drops of useable water fast. Meanwhile, in thirsty India, new ways of conserving water are being implimented as an experiment we can all learn from.
As Mexican President Vicente Fox prepares to open the 4th World Water Forum, the BBC's Claire Marshall looks at the severe water problems facing Mexico City.
Many in the city have just one hour of running water per week
With a population of more than 20 million people, and dwindling water supplies, the Mexican capital is a stark example of the severe water supply issues facing many of the world's rapidly developing mega-cities.
The parched ground crunches beneath your feet as you walk through the Texcoco area on the outskirts of the city. The bleached, cracked terrain stretches out in all directions. Nothing can grow here.
All over the world, people are leaving the land and heading into the megacities. Many countries have all their services and activities concentrated in one city. London and Paris are prime examples. This is the imperialist mode of city building, namely, all resources concentrate at the center of political power like Rome in its heyday.
Japan is one big mega city: Tokyo. China is much more diffuse but even there, the cities are mushrooming while the distant countryside is falling apart. In Japan, one is hard pressed to find any youthful people in the countryside. In Mexico, there is still a growing population so there isn't a total derth of young people in the countryside but the population explosion is slowing down.
The oldest cities on earth were in the Euphrates valley. It is now desert. It got really bad when oil was discovered and the population decided to live off of oil profits one way or another. The early cities of this valley were decked in green growing things, an earthly paradise so wonderful, the ancient Greeks decided the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the world.
Now it is all dust and ashes.
In India, the same process is at work. Water is running out, industry eats a lot of water and pollutes farmlands and dries out everything. Soda and water bottlers are draining natural spring reserves all over the planet. The cycle of violent rain/drought which is afflicting even temperate zones such as where I live is not replentishing the underground reserves because the rain runs off too fast. 3" of summer thunderstorms=1/2" or less of a gentle rain or light snow. The real fillers of the underground reserves is snow, deep snow. As it melts slowly, it leaks into the ground via tiny gaps in the topsoil created by worms and tree roots, for example.
The desert in Arizona has a layer of caliche which is hard as rock. I used to have to pick axe my way through it when working in my mother's vegetable garden. I used to wheelbarrel the horse manure over to it and mix it with the hard desert soil. Making the garden very level was top importance because this kept in the water. Soaking the soil by the roots of each plant worked better than irrigation which causes the caliche to leach out and harden the ground all over again.
Here is an interesting solution:
Some 15 km from Kishangarh is the village of Tillonia.I already do this on my mountain. Irritated with the drought/rain/drought cycle the warming planet is imposing on my environment, I have been steadily building drains, water catchment areas and terraces to capture as much water as possible. My well is an artesian well during wet years. I am building, this summer, a water catchment area that will take all the water from the varioius buildings and channel it into a pond that will have a soaking terrace next to is for overflows. I did this with some of the driveway run-off pipes and it works really well.
Approaching it through the same arid landscape, you are suddenly confronted with lush green fields.
Here environmentalists have been working with local villagers to help recharge the groundwater by harvesting rainwater.
A network of pipes and drains transports rainwater to special pits and wells and eventually filters down into the ground.
This doesn't harm the local stream that runs at the foot of my hillside. It depends on upwelling water rising through springs and clay water traps. The higher the hydration on my hillside, the better the spring runs and cutting back on flood waters means the stream won't turn ugly like it did last October when we got 7" of rain in one day and our roads were nearly washed away and houses were swept away in other mountain villages.
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