වැස්ස එකතු කර ජල හිඟයට මුහුණදෙන මෙක්සිකෝ නගරවැසියන්

Residents in Mexico City retrieve rainwater to mitigate water scarcity-

Residents in Mexico City are retrieving rainwater to mitigate drought-induced water scarcity and crisis, and making feasible adaptations and remediations to climate change and infrastructure problems.

The Mexico City metropolitan area, home to 21 million people, is applying water rationing to promote water-saving and restrict unnecessary use of water resources.

While federal officials insist they're working on improvements to the supply problems, residents say they only see the situation getting worse and fear a day when there may be no water at all.

One local company - Isla Urbana - or Urban Island - aims to decrease dependence on that inconsistent supply, by turning homes into individual rainwater harvesting units.

"We capture the rain that falls on the rooftops, and that clean water goes into our tank. We pump it out with a pump, and it passes through a filter, and then it's clean for all domestic household uses," said Jennifer White, general director of Isla Urbana.

Isla Urbana has installed more than 40,000 rain catchment systems across Mexico since its founding fifteen years ago.

But for these rainwater harvesting systems to provide homes with a meaningful supply, there must first be rain. However, in these times of climate change, Mexico's traditional May to October rainy season has become anything but reliable.

"It would start [on] the 15th of May like clockwork. And now what I've seen over the last few years is the rainy season starting later and later. So yes, it's definitely changing," White said.

When the rains finally arrive, they are too abundant and intense, causing floods across the country.

As Mexico City faces the joint threats of not enough rain and then far too much, rainwater harvesting may allow its parched residents to get the balance just right.

"Rainwater can be our only source of water during the rainy season, which is five, six months of the year. And so we can allow those systems, the dams, the aquifers to recharge. So we don't get to these crisis points where it's the end of the dry season and there's not enough water for everybody," said White.

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