Earth Equity News

Mexico Experiences the Worst Drought in Six Decades. By Elizabeth Malkin, NY Times, September 13, 2009. "As the end of the four-month rainy season approaches Mexico City, it has finally begun to rain. But the daily downpours, which have overwhelmed the city's drainage network and flooded subway stations, arrived too late. Mexico is enduring its worst drought in six decades. Crops are drying up in the fields and water is being rationed in the capital. Residents of poor neighborhoods have hijacked water trucks, and there are other signs of social tensions building. El Niño, a weather pattern that warms water in the Pacific Ocean and leads to changing weather around the Pacific Basin, is causing the drought, Mexican officials say. [Climate-change is widely considered to be a factor in this drought and others around the world]. Some of Mexico's neighbors have been grappling with similar problems. Guatemala declared 'a state of calamity' last week, because the drought has caused shortages of staples like corn and beans... About 70% of Mexico City's water is now pumped out of the [underlying] aquifer at a rate more than twice as fast as rainfall is able to replenish it."