By Tom Freyberg, Chief editor
Despite being one of the highest consuming nations of carbonated drinks, reform is on the horizon for Mexico’s municipal water market.
US President Donald Trump’s political sledgehammer of a promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico may take longer to ever come to fruition than his term in power, yet there are more important issues at hand.
Private finance is now being unlocked to accelerate municipal water projects in Mexico but there is a bottleneck stopping the money filtering through. That’s according to Edmundo Gamas, the executive director of the Mexican Institute of Infrastructure Development. Edmundo is a great advocate for the industry: he’s passionate, articulate, is upfront about the huge challenges facing the country but is trying to proactively change things. Our team was invited as the video media partner to Mexico City for the second annual Aquatech Mexico event. Edmonduo was one of the many top tier Mexican water professionals we interviewed while on location.
Despite classing myself as a seasoned traveller I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about the travel this time. You can blame international media coverage and films like Sicario for that. Yet, walking the streets of the city - certainly the area in which I was staying - felt very safe, even late at night after a couple of beers!
The city is 2,400m above sea level and getting water to it has been deemed as one of the world’s great feats of hydro-engineering. Not only that, but the biggest single source of water for Mexico City is located 120km from the Federal District. Once you add land subsidence and earthquakes into the mix, it’s easy to see why leakage has reached such high levels in the past.
Interestingly, ahead of the show we were invited to join a tour to the ancient city of Teotihuacan, including the climb upto the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. It’s mind blowing to think that 2000 years ago it took over 20,000 people working daily around 300 years to built such a feat. What infrastructure or landmarks are we constructing today will last that long? In 2000 years will three million people (the annual visitor number to Teotihuacan) travel the world to see the Shard tower in London? Probably not.
With Mexico consuming the highest amount of carbonated drinks in the world - one side effect of an old and leaky water network - the city and country has a monumental climb ahead to improve its water supply. With finance available and a reform in the public-private-partnership law a couple of years ago, now is a good time for international suppliers, if they haven’t already, to enter the Mexican market. Knowledge sharing, from countries with advanced water supplies, will be crucial for the development of the country’s water supply. My advice would be ignore the media scaremongering and visit the country. Oh, and don’t watch Sicario before you visit.
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