Job Discussion Forums

[jfurgers]

While reading the post on dog food I noticed someone mentioned the coming water shortage in DF. Below is what I read in The News, Thursday January 8,2009.

"Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard was apparently unaware of the federal authorities' decision to ration water in the capital in the coming months, but will still go along with the plan, according to media reports.
Ebrard told reporters Wednesday that his administration had just learned that the federal water authority known as Conagua decided to ration water in nine of the capital's 16 boroughs and 13 municipalities in the neighboring State of Mexico.
But he said his administration was prepared to deal with the crisis and go along with Conagua's plan. Citing a shortage of water in the Cutzamala dam network, Conagua reportedly decided that through May, millions of Mexico City residents will have reduced water supply.
For three days out of every month, residents will have to go without potable water, El Universal reported Wednesday. About 5.5 million residents in the capital and the State of Mexico, which rings Mexico City on three sides like a horseshoe, will be affected, according to the daily. The specific days during which water willbe cut off have not yet been announced."
I'll keep all posted if I see anything mentioning specific dates.

[lozwich]

I didn't know we had potable water.

[Gary Denness]

I caught the tail end of this on a news report on telly. Very depressing. Although I'm probably happier than most. At first I thought they had said three days a week, and didn't find out the truth for a few days. Three times a month doesn't seem so bad now. So long as they don't turn it off just as I'm in the middle of cleaning the turtles pond, as has happened before, I can live with it.

[Guy Courchesne]

9 of 16 delegaciones...I wonder which will be spared? Iztapalapa is already short on water as it is. Hopefully a bit of January rain will help.

[MO39]

Thanks, jfurgers, for filling in the details of this unpleasant but obviously necessary measure. Hmm, I wonder why Conagua had not communicated this information to Mayor Ebrard until now.

[lozwich]

I just found this

http://www.conagua.gob.mx/CONAGUA07/NotaP/BOLETIN%20001-09.pdf

[Guy Courchesne]

[MO39]

Thanks for the link, lozwich. It does give a reasonable explanation for what's going to happen for the next 5 months but not when it's going to take place.

[TheLongWayHome]

The water has been rationed here (in SLP) every summer since I can remember - one day you get water (fill up your aljibe!) and one day you don't. When we lived in Lomas, near the governor's house, the water was never rationed of course, but in other zones (where politicians don't live) it is.

According the government, the water arrives potable. It's the state of people's aljibes and water tanks that make it non-p�table... yeah right.

[raulyn]

I am planing on moving to D.F. in June. I am looking at water filtration systems and maybe an ozone machine to kill anything that isn't filtered out.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing or does everyone just buy bottled water and haul the 5 gallon bottle from the store to their house every other week or so?

Approx how much does a bottle cost ? How safe is that water?

I'm trying to figure out which method of safe hydration is the most health and cost effective...

Any experiences?

[Samantha]

I was wondering why you folks in the big city don't have water storage systems like we do? We have a long-standing water crisis here with all the new condos and hotels being built without concern of where the utilities are to come from. Not a day goes by that the water isn't shut off or simply runs out of pressure. It returns at night and the holding tank on our rooftops, the tinaco, fills up giving us the next days supply of water. Many people have an aljibe (underground water storage tank mentioned by LongWayHome), which is usually a larger back-up supply. Some people have both, utilizing a pump, since with low pressure it takes forever to get water to the rooftop by gravity feed. Anyway, it's a problem we are very used to in this area. Sometimes they let us know when it's going down for 4 days at a time, other times they just announce a broken pipe (after the fact).

[TheLongWayHome]

[notamiss]

Raulyn, we were actually drinking tap water for years, just putting in colloidal silver drops (brand names Microdyn or BacDyn) por las dudas. Until last year when the tap water started coming so heavily chlorinated that it was extremely unpalatable, so we started buying 20-liter garafones* for our drinking water most of the time.

Since then the chlorination level of the water has varied up and down, and on days when it isn't excessive, I still purify a pitcher of water to have on hand.

*Off-topic: Did you know that the English for garafon is �carboy�? I didn't.

[Guy Courchesne]

[lozwich]

I just bought water ($30 for a garrafon) from a bloke who gets into my building and screams out "agua!!!" in the stairwell. I only live on the 2nd floor, and I'd never think of carrying a garrafon bought at the shop on the corner up the stairs. Too exhausting!

Notamiss, did you hear about that bloke who turned blue because he had too much colloidal silver? http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641297781?f=rss I always thought Microdyn had iodine in it, and that could be nasty if it built up in your bloodstream. Is that not true?

My pump here is great, but where I lived in Oaxaca, the little on-off automaticky thingy on top of the tinaca used to break all the time, meaning I had to climb onto the roof, take off the lid, avoid the scorpions and jiggle the little thing without falling to my death in the street below. Something Melee used to love telling me is about how one day all the sewers started running backwards in the town, so everyone's underground storage tanks filled up with number two's, and that since that happened, the system hadn't been cleaned out properly.

I'll take the garrafon, thanks.