MEXICO CITY (AP) — As Sonia Estefanía Palacios Díaz recently soared over her neighborhood in a cable car, she scanned a sea of blue and black water tanks, pipes and cables in search of rainwater harvesting systems.
“There’s one!” she said, pointing to a black tank connected to a smaller blue unit with connecting pipes snaking up to the roof where the water collected.
“I’m always looking for different rainwater harvesting systems,” she said, laughing. “I’m also always looking for places where I can install one.”
With drought and inconsistent public water supplies, many Mexico City residents are turning to rainwater harvesting. The pioneering company Isla Urbana, which does both nonprofit and for-profit work, has installed more than 40,000 rainwater harvesting systems across Mexico since it was founded 15 years ago. And the Mexico City government has invested in the installation of 70,000 systems since 2019, still a drop in the bucket for the sprawling metropolis of about 9 million.
However, there is little training and limited resources to maintain the systems after installation, which results in the systems falling into disuse or residents selling the parts.
Meet Palacios Díaz and a group of other women who make up the cooperative Pixcatl, which means “water harvest” in the indigenous Nahuatl language.
In lower-income areas like Iztapalapa — Mexico City’s most populous borough — the group is trying to keep systems running while also teaching residents how to maintain them. That includes brainstorming their own designs and offering residents low-cost options for extra materials.
Palacios Díaz has been dealing with water scarcity in Iztapalapa for as long as she can remember. “Here, people line up to get water (from distribution trucks) from 3 a.m. until 2 p.m.,” she said from her mother’s house. “There was a time when we went more than a month without a regular water supply.”
Earlier this year, reservoirs that supply the capital were running dangerously low. Authorities reduced the amount of water being released, and neighborhoods unaccustomed to water scarcity faced a new reality.
As the rainy season began, most of Mexico was in moderate to severe drought. Mexico’s reservoirs are approaching half of capacity, but they’re not much full yet, according to recent reports from the National Water Commission.
The country relies on rainfall, which normally stops in October, to fill the reservoirs, but drought has left water levels so low that this could take years.
This has encouraged many Mexicans, like Palacios Díaz, to switch to rainwater harvesting.
At the height of the pandemic, she was teaching classes on urban farming and water harvesting at a local community space. It wasn’t until her students said they wanted to learn how to install and understand their own systems that she seriously considered taking a government course. After enrolling in a training program to become an installer in 2022, she met other young women from the city interested in water harvesting systems, and they founded the co-op.
Near the edge of a volcano on the outskirts of Iztapalapa, Lizbeth Esther Pineda Castro, another member of the cooperative, and Palacios Díaz have adapted a ladder to reach the roof of a small house. The two-story home inherited by Sara Huitzil Morales and her niece is in the Buenavista neighborhood of Iztapalapa.
Huitzil’s mother was entitled to a free water collection system from the Mexico City government in 2021. After installation, Huitzil requested maintenance from Pixcatl, as she was unsure how to maintain the system.
Wearing their navy polo shirts with the Pixcatl logo, Pineda and Palacios Díaz cleared the debris from the roof so the system would only collect fresh rain.
“We also add a little soap and chlorine to clean the pipes,” Palacios Díaz said as she swept the liquid through a connecting tube that leads to the collection system.
Below, they joined other members of the cooperative in a courtyard to look at the giant 2,500-liter water tank, enough to serve Huitzil’s needs for several months when full. The colossal container was nearly as tall as Palacios Díaz. Another member of the cooperative was cleaning a filter of leaves and dirt.
Finally, Palacios Díaz threw a few chlorine pills into the water to clean and disinfect it. The frequency of the entire maintenance process depends on several factors, including how much water is in the tank, how much has been used, and whether it has rained.
Huitzil said that before the harvest system, she faced water shortages and rationing. The public water was consistently dirty and “dark like chocolate.” She often used the water left over from washing to clean the yard. Sometimes, when dirty water arrived, she would put it in buckets and wait for the dirt to sink to the bottom, then use the cleanest water to shower.
The system has transformed her daily water use and she doesn’t have to think twice about its safety. The system initially uses six filters, plus three more if the water is to be used as drinking water.
“The water is good, it’s so good!” said Huitzil. “My clothes come out very clean and the water is sweet. You can even harvest it to make it cleaner to drink.”
With more than 1.8 million residents, Iztapalapa is one of the main beneficiaries of Mexico City’s harvesting systems program. But after two years, the city stopped giving away systems for free when many residents, struggling financially and sometimes maintaining the systems, sold their parts.
“It should be easy to maintain, but it’s annoying,” Palacios Diaz said. “Unfortunately, we’re in a scenario where we not only have environmental problems, we also have economic problems.”
Loreta Castro Reguera, an architecture professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, focuses much of her work on water and urban design. She said rainwater harvesting is a great solution because during Mexico’s rainy season, residents can use rainwater instead of water from the Cutzamala system, a reservoir that supplies water to Mexico City and the State of Mexico.
Palacios Díaz dreams of rainwater systems in markets, shopping malls and other public spaces. The cooperative also works on designs that are tailored to the needs of its customers — whether it is a low-cost system or to meet a greater demand for water.
As women, she and the other members of Pixcatl want to be an example for those who want to get involved in water harvesting.
“I think it’s really beautiful that we can inspire young girls and show women in a different context,” said another member, Abigail López Durán, “that we can also use tools and not be afraid of being hurt.”
___
The Associated Press receives support for its coverage of water and environmental policy from the Walton Family Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment