The Last Drops of Mexico City

186 comments

·March 20, 2025

davidw

Just casually throwing in 'overpopulation' when in so many places, water for actual human needs like drinking, bathing and even washing clothes, is a tiny fraction compared to much more wasteful things like grass, America's largest crop.

I live in a dry bit of the American west and municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture is often not very efficient because of old water rules that give water to things like hobby farms when real farms downstream don't get what they need.

Nifty3929

100% this. or 95%. When you say "grass, America's largest crop" I assume you are referring to lawns, but actually I think your last point is the crucial one: "...municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture..."

California has plenty of water for it's people. If you add up ALL residential, commercial and industrial use, including all outdoor landscape watering, baseball fields, golf courses, etc - it all adds up to around 10-20% of the water used (depending on rainfall).

Where does the rest (80-90%) of California's water go? Agriculture. Half the produce of which is exported to other states and countries. Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? And about half of that rice is exported, much to Asia (!!)

California is rather like Saudi Arabia, with the farmers pumping out all the water and selling it in the form of agricultural produce.

But take a shorter shower please! And you don't really NEED to flush that toilet.

ForOldHack

I think he is referring to Golf Courses:

"Golf courses in the US occupy roughly 2 million acres, which is larger than the state of Delaware but smaller than Connecticut."

"California almond growers use between 4.7 to 5.5 million acre-feet of water annually, representing roughly 14.4% to 16.75% of the state's agricultural water consumption"

WHAT THE H#$%?

arbitrary_name

Wait, the migrating birds need the wetlands that the rice pairs imitate. It's not as bad as you think. The whole central valley was wetlands, this is better than draining all of it for alfalfa or almonds.

samatman

That water grows 77% of all almonds, worldwide.

Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's water consumption?

Are you sure?

dragonwriter

> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert?

Rice benefits from flooding for weed control (because it is unusually flood resistant), but doesn't consume a lot of water (the water from flooding is available for downstream use.)

If you want to complain about water-intenaive crops in CA, the issue is almonds, not rice.

Also, while there are parts of CA that are desert or “almost desert” (desert or semi-arid climate), the area around Sacramento is hot-summer Mediterranean.

rcpt

The issue is animal agriculture, not almonds.

For example cow milk uses more water in absolute terms, and more water per calorie, than almond milk.

bobthepanda

When talking about grass, they might be talking about alfalfa, which is grown in California for use as animal feed. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...

davidw

I'm being a bit tongue in cheek. But we really do dump a lot of resources into lawns https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigat...

That's fine if it's a place for, say, children to play, but most of them do not get used that way.

fakedang

It gets better. Grown in California for export to China and Saudi Arabia, where they're used for cattle feed.

Also fun fact, a lot of farm managers in Saudi Arabia are either Scottish or Australian.

wnc3141

A big part of depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is due to domestic policy to include corn in just about anything - including fuel.

toast0

> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert?

That's not really accurate. Much of California is Mediterranean climate, including all of Sacramento county. Yes, there's some desert in California, but most of the agriculture happens elsewhere; but it depends on what you mean by 'almost a desert', a lot of the central valley is classified as arid and that's where a lot of the agriculture happens. A lot of people also live in (different) arid parts of California though, maybe they should move to where fresh water is easier to access :P

Also, the terrain means it's relatively easy to move water from the north around the central valley, but difficult to move it from the north or central valley to the greater LA area. Elsewhere in the thread, people claim water is fungible, and it mostly is, but location is important, and moving water in Bakersfield to Los Angeles is non trivial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/F...

labster

GP’s statement you quoted is entirely inaccurate. The natural state of California’s Central Valley is a wetland, which is how settlers found it in the 1800s, full of swamps, fish, deer, and lakes. And then they set to the work of draining all of the swamps so they could grow things there. It’s an unnatural desertification, and if the dams and waterworks were removed, it would return to the marshland. Even now, the rice grown near Sacramento is grown in land that is periodically flooded by the river.

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Nifty3929

Some responders have challenged my assertion that Sacramento is a desert. I concede the point - it's actually classified as Mediterranean.

That said, rice consumes a lot of irrigation water:

"In California, there is very little to no rainfall during the rice growing season, so this is not usually considered in water budgets. On average, about 5 acre feet/acre (AF/ac) of irrigation water is applied to a rice field during the growing"

https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf

Also, rice is not a particularly big water consumer compared to other crops - it's just one that came to mind. You could pick from dozens of others - Almonds, pistachios, etc.

California simply uses a LOT of water to produce a LOT of food, about half of it being exported.

yimby2001

Are you saying California shouldn’t export food? It’s one of the best food growing environments on the planet.

animal_spirits

I kind of understand this argument, but I kind of don't. Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California?

> It supplies one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts. California is the country’s biggest milk producer, producing nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk. And of all crops grown in the U.S., 19 of them – including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes – are grown only in California.

- https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/c...

dylan604

There's a lot of crops that are grown in CA that are not native to the area, and require a lot of water to be viable in that area. Trying to grow a crop native to monsoon areas in a dry area is just unsane.

PaulDavisThe1st

> Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California?

Yes. This scale of agriculture in CA is not historical, and is driven by hydro-engineering projects of huge scale throughout the American west that began in the 1940s. The Bureau of Reclamation's fever dreams were fueled by two decades near the turn of the 20th century that were some of the wettest in a thousand years, and this has led to a crazy situation that is not sustainable in the long term (perhaps not even in the medium term).

joshuaissac

Tax water for agricultural usage enough to fund desalination plants for their water use. The market participants should then adapt by switching to less water-intensive crops, or paying the tax and getting the desalination plants.

netsharc

From the survival of civilization scale, most of "almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes" are probably luxury items that we can ill afford.

Sure it's a balancing act between "save the planet!" and "save the economy!". Guess who's winning so far?

throwanem

> California is rather like Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the key insight required to explain the 20th century.

It has the force of truth: now that I see it put so simply, I struggle to understand why no one has been able to do so before.

stevenwoo

Cadillac Desert posits this about most of the American West, it was sparsely populated prior to the widespread usage of pumps for water and dam program (to generate electricity to pump reservoir water) of Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. Those power plants and population growths might have fueled American productivity in WW2 but it also was a subsidized consolidation of farms under large corporations and rich individuals when it was meant to help smaller farmers. It's an older book with a 2017 update.

WillPostForFood

It is a key insight, indirectly. The power of a falsehood to sway emotions on

AStonesThrow

> California is rather like Saudi Arabia

More true than you may think: the first two syllables rhyme with “Caliph” and the Spanish Conquistadores always had grand designs on such huge tracts of land, including naming the capital city after the Eucharist.

The Reconquista was accomplished at the same time Columbus sailed, and Reconquista II: Electric Boogalo has been underway for a hundred years...

Reubachi

The "real farms" (Ie beef, dairy, grains, corns) you mentioned are absorbing on the order of 80 percent of the water, not commercial and private lawns/grass.

Hobby farms with several cows and a shop that sells maple syrup consum eabout 1/10000th a percent of water as for example con-agra suppliers, nestle etc.

There is the constantly rotating story of "this one small family farm in colorado uses more of california's water than LA county". That is a LARGE conglomerate farm which is part of the corporate farm problem, not mom and pop farms.

I assure you;In the USA specifically, your families ability to eat and provide food for the things we eat WILL be more important in the long run than bathing or washing clothes, until we decide that beef proteins aren't the msot sustainable.

dralley

While that's true it has very little to do with Mexico City's specific issues. It's at 7300 feet elevation surrounded by a ring of mountains that keep out a lot of the rain and moisture, and there's already not that much agriculture going on given the limited space.

davidw

I don't know anything about water allocation and provisioning in Mexico City, but the article itself doesn't limit itself to Mexico city either:

"It exemplifies a future that cities worldwide could face if global warming and overpopulation continue."

The city where I live is, I'm sure, very different from Mexico City, but we have reduced our water usage while the population has grown, thanks to things like xeriscaping. I imagine things are more difficult in Mexico City because there is less money, and orders of magnitude more people.

PaulDavisThe1st

> we have reduced our water usage while the population has grown

I don't know where you live, but if it is a city like most others, you've likely reduced your per-capita water use, but not total water use. This is certainly true of most cities in the American west. They have made impressive (above 30%) reductions in per-capita water use, but they have (in many cases) grown by more than that.

bri3k

I hate when they promote the use of low-flow toilets which save 1-2 gallons when compared to irrigation of farm land measured in acre-inches of water. A acre-inch of water is 27,000 gallons. Corn needs 12 acre-inches to grow to maturity, or over 325,000 per acre.

hgfrujbguijh

that sounds a lot like where i live (bend, or)

davidw

That's where I am

https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/droug... is really informative.

pier25

I live in Mexico. About 30 mins from where I live, Amazon and others have built data centers (presumably for AI) which consume water. This is affecting agriculture in a region that is already suffering from drought.

https://www.context.news/ai/thirsty-data-centres-spring-up-i...

cicloid

I would imagine you are talking about Queretaro. Google and Microsoft also have data centers there.

This is a thing that has been more than a decade in the making, mostly because Queretaro does not have seismic activity and is only a couple of hours north of Mexico City.

While the water sources are completely different, both regions are prone to intense water seasons and, in the last couple of years, intense droughts.

More specifically, Queretaro is a semi-desert, so this behavior is a bit more expected.

Aside: Coming from personal experience I don't think that current agricultural methods are the best and are pron to wasting water, at least what I remember from Queretaro

pier25

Yes, Querétaro state (not the city).

If you check the link in my comment these are not the data centers close to the city which everyone knows but newer ones in Colón.

cicloid

For all intents and purposes, Colon is considered to be part of the ZMQ (Zona Metropolitana de Queretaro)^1

Funny thing the english wikipedia article does not even mention it. But yeah, Each of those Cloud providers, have at least 3 buildings distributed on multiple industrial parks in the metropolitan area and I'm not even mentioning the ones from Kio Networks, IBM (SoftLayer). We are one step away from having one from OVH and Hetzner.

The only data center I know that is in the middle of the city of Queretaro is the one from Triara (aka Telmex, one of the many companies from Carlos Slim). Most of them are in the outskirts of the urban area.

1. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zona_metropolitana_de_Quer%C3%...

doctoboggan

Genuinely curious, how much water do data centers consume? I would think they might need a good amount of water at startup, but any use would be in a closed system. Am I misunderstanding their water use? Do they lose a lot of it to the atmosphere somehow?

physhster

Some data centers use evaporative cooling, in outside chillers. The water use is fairly high.

Robotbeat

Is there a reason the price of the water can’t be equal to marginal cost of getting more water, so the net effect of the data center is zero?

Water can be piped in from elsewhere, can be made from reverse osmosis from even briney aquifers or seawater or even sewage. Is this really an unsolvable problem or is it just a mispricing of the water? This makes me skeptical of stories like this.

betaby

I'm not aware of any single one like that in Mexico.

ForTheKidz

Jesus christ. We're a nation run by toddlers.

myaccountonhn

This source is specifically about AIs water usage: https://savethe.ai/water/

> Having it generate a 100-word email consumes about 500ml of water (17 oz).

> 10 to 50 queries consume about 2 litres of water (½ gallon).2

yimby2001

Right, but you know that’s not true.

quickthrowman

Most data centers use evaporative cooling towers, they’re much more efficient than a closed loop system.

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thelastgallon

It is never mentioned that electricity from fossil fuel generation consumes a lot of water.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power generators are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals and account for about 40% of total water withdrawals in the United States:https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453

Thermoelectric power plants—including coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants—boil water to create steam, which then spins a turbine to generate electricity. Cooling water is passed through the steam leaving the turbine to cool and condense the steam. This step reduces the steam's exit pressure and recaptures its heat, which is then used to preheat fluid entering the boiler.

U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015:https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698

non-

One thing I'd like more info on is in what ways Nestlé and other water companies have contributed to the problem.

I've long heard that they lobby to prevent the local Government in CDMX from providing potable water in order to protect their bottled water and water-delivery business, but I actually don't know how well substantiated those accusations are.

On the positive side of things, Mexico City gets a ton of rain during the wet season which can be harvested with rooftop collectors.

myaccountonhn

When I lived in Oaxaca it was a massive issue with portable water only being available through private means from private springs in the nearby area. All hotels and tourist attractions had access to water, while the rest went without, some for months.

nozzlegear

Do you remember how much they would charge for water?

hotep99

I live in Mexico City and a large part of this is the odd compulsion that chilangos have to put concrete over absolutely everything. It rains but there is very little unpaved surfaces to absorb any of that water and return it to underground sources. I've had friends and family members inexplicably rip out nice gardens at their houses and replace it with paved surfaces. My in-laws have a large yard that only has a few square meters of unpaved ground left. My street has flooding problems during intense rains every couple years in large part because no water can be absorbed anywhere and if the small street drains get clogged with branches it is a disaster.

roncesvalles

The choices are either pavement or grass. Open ground creates dust and mud.

The reason why 1st world cities look "cleaner" is because every single sq inch is either paved or turfed with grass.

r00fus

Xeriscaping is a thing. Also are other greenery options than grass. We had a dust/mud patch, but then planted 100% clover (by simply throwing seeds on the ground). Now we have completely unmanaged greenery. It's not neat, we don't even water it - it's green in the spring, golden/brown in other seasons. Easy peasy.

LeftHandPath

Off topic: This page is beautiful. Love it when people use magazine-style layouts on the web.

jppullen

Hi all -- I'm Long Lead's editor, John Patrick Pullen. Thanks for the compliments (those of you who have) and for those who have other thoughts, we hear you.

I'm personally a big fan of reader-mode on browsers, myself, but at Long Lead, we think there's an opportunity for a new kind of journalism, one that takes time to produce and relies on design as much as it does editorial and art. You can't stuff that in a reader-mode — and really we don't want to.

We're a journalism studio. What's a journalism studio, you ask? Well, what's a film studio? You know -- they produce feature films that look great in the right or best contexts. Watching on a phone isn't as good as a tablet, which isn't as good as a TV or a projector. Similarly, our features journalism is built to scale (we do actually build separate mobile layouts) but isn't designed to leave our site. Also, all of them are bespoke builds made to support the reporting that they're housing, because every feature has its own needs. We work in every medium, too, from podcasts to documentaries to photo features like this one.

We believe there's an opportunity for this kind of journalism, because it used to exist. Remember a time when magazines arrived in your inbox with gorgeous photos and fact-checked features that took months to make? That's what we're doing, but online.

I hope you follow us and our work. We have some exciting stuff ahead. The best way to know when our next feature drops is by subscribing to our newsletter at www.longlead.com/newsletters.

Thanks so much for reading!

internetter

A couple pieces of feedback from someone who loves your content

1. I can't find an RSS feed anywhere?

2. Your homepage (https://longlead.com/#stories) is — and there's no gentle way to put this — borderline unusable. All I want is a simple list of your stories.

With a little bit of "undesigning," you'd have an amazing site :)

true_blue

It's pretty for sure, but it breaks reader view which I use a lot, so I don't like it. also it requires a lot of unnecessary scrolling to read since the text is broken up so much

ericmay

Is it just me or is anyone else unable to swipe to go back to the parent HN page from the longlead.com website?

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eudhxhdhsb32

It's annoying to read on my phone. Text and pictures are moving at different speeds than I'm scrolling.

racl101

Pretty stylish.

Wouldn't want to read this on a phone though I tell you hwhat.

Aardwolf

Works great in firefox on android. Text takes exact screen width and is not too small nor too big, and there are no stupid floating right side icons overlapping the text, what more do you need

It does have an unneeded text-scrolling-up effect, and breaks reader view which means they're doing something sinister, but at least reader view isn't actually necessary in this one for the way it looks

ropable

Counterpoint: it's super clear and easy to read on Firefox mobile. No popups or interstitial ads. Yes it's quite lengthy and there are many pictures, but you know what you're getting into with any long article like this one. This is exactly what I want for reading on mobile.

Marsymars

I read it on my TV, and it was pretty nice.

Suppafly

>Wouldn't want to read this on a phone though I tell you hwhat.

Most decently designed sites know how to respond to different screen sizes.

mjmsmith

Why on earth is jppullen's comment dead?

jppullen

Well that's not cool. Here it is again:

Hi all -- I'm Long Lead's editor, John Patrick Pullen. Thanks for the compliments (those of you who have) and for those who have other thoughts, we hear you.

I hope you follow us and our work. We have some exciting stuff ahead. The best way to know when our next feature drops is by subscribing to our newsletter at www.longlead.com/newsletters.

Thanks so much for reading!

mjmsmith

Please consider adding an RSS feed for us old fogeys.

pdntspa

Ugh no. My scroll wheel finger hurts because they are allergic to a simple text flow. I hate it when people get too fancy with this shit

glenneroo

Pro-tip: If you click anywhere on the page, you can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll up/down and avoid finger-wheel-fatigue :)

_ache_

Ok, so nobody seam to talk about the privatisation of water in Mexico.

It is at the root of the problem. Coca Cola is the most known absurd operator of this industry. National water is too cheap and used by private company for nearly nothing. Vicente Fox was a president of Coca Cola company in Mexico before becoming the president of Mexico, you can guess the « colonisation » was easier by that. (Coca Cola isn't alone, it is just the most known, Danone, the French company is also plundering Mexico water for example, AI datacenter too, ...).

Coca cola is known to be responsible for the drying of Monterrey and San Cristobal de Las Casas.

eckmLJE

I kept hoping they'd provide a reference of Tenochtitlan. Possibly the most striking thing I learned when visiting Mexico City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan

articlereader

they did!

>Mexico City was built on top of what used to be a large body of water, which would make its water shortage appear ironic if it wasn’t so tragic. In the early 1300s, the Mexica (or Aztecs) settled on an island in the middle of what used to be a huge lake called Texcoco, the largest among five intertwined lakes.

But after the arrival of the Spaniards, the city started to expand, and the urban sprawl caused the lake system to dry up. By the early 20th century, the rivers feeding the once-rich lake zone were put into pipelines to make way for motor vehicles. Very little is left of the lakes, while the rivers have become practically invisible.

eckmLJE

Thank you! I scanned the text and scrolled through all the pics, and searched for `tenoch` and didn't get any hits. "The urban sprawl caused the lake system to dry up" glosses over a super interesting sequence of decisions that led to the disaster.