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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Mexico City Sinking Fast

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 81,00.html

    March 17, 2006


    Thirst for water puts city on the slide – into the mud
    From James Hider in Mexico City

    ::nobreak::BLIGHTED by pollution and crime, Mexico City is facing another problem — it is sinking into the ground, and fast.

    This megalopolis of 22 million people is falling at an alarming rate, dropping by as much as 15 inches (38cm) a year in some areas, and by almost 30 feet over the past 100 years. The rate of collapse has accelerated as city authorities pump water from subterranean aquifers to quench the thirst of the spiralling population, which attracts another 1,000 migrants from the provinces each day.

    Despite the efforts of preservationists, buildings are being torn apart. Inside Mexico City’s colonial-era cathedral, the tiled floor and vaulted roofs slant in opposite directions at crazy angles. Some parts have sunk almost 8ft, while others remained stable. To hold the place together, metal joists have been bolted to the vast stone structures, built from material taken from the demolished pyramids of the Aztecs.

    “It’s a building in intensive therapy,” said Javier Cortés Rocha, one of the architects struggling to save the capital.

    When Hernándo Cortéz and his conquistadors first set eyes on Tenochtitilan — what would later become Mexico City — in 1519, the Aztec city was a maze of islands built on a shallow lake. Having defeated the Aztecs in battle, the Spaniards destroyed their pyramids and turned them into huge palaces and cathedrals, draining the lake for urban expansion.

    In the past 50 years, the population of the city has more than quadrupled. To keep up with demand, the city pumps 10,000 litres (2,200 gallons) of water per second out of the ground, hollowing out the subterranean lake that once kept the city in place.

    The crisis brought Mexico some unwanted distinctions. The technology it has pioneered to shore up its crumbling monuments has already been exported to help to stabilise the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And this week, it hosts the World Water Forum to discuss ways in which water management will dominate the geopolitics of tomorrow.

    “Water, if not properly managed, will start to become as bad an issue as oil,” said Ilan Adler, director of the International Renewable Resources Institute in Mexico.

    Despite its pumping efforts, the city wastes about 40 per cent of the water through leaking pipes. The loss has created terrible shortages, with about one million residents left with no running water, dependant on tankers delivering often unsanitary supplies. Another seven to eight million people only receive water in their taps every few days.

    Olga Hernández García, a housewife, says that she has running water on average on only one day out of five. In her yard in the impoverished suburb of Ixtapalapa there are buckets, plastic barrels and basins filled to the brim with water she has stored to keep her family of six going until the pipes flow again.

    “We always have to be aware of the water so we can fill our basins,” she said while scrubbing clothes in a stone washbasin because her washingmachine uses too much water. Often when it does flow, it comes in the middle of the night. “I leave my window open so I can hear, and tell my husband, ‘The water’s on’. We get up and start gathering it.”

    One of the few parts of the original Aztec city to survive is in Xochimilco, in the south. Here, boatmen punt along canals built among islands created by planting trees and plants on shallow mud banks. As the vegetation built up, islands emerged that could be used to raise corn. Xochimilco, despite its murky brown waters, is now a weekend getaway for Mexicans keen to retrace their past and enjoy a few beers on the water, accompanied by mariachi bands that float alongside. It almost did not make it, however — six years ago, it was nearly drained by the demands of the thirsty mega-city, and only government intervention stopped it disappearing completely.
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    Senior Member moosetracks's Avatar
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    lose 40% through leaky pipes???

    With the millions we sent them each year, and Fox didn't put in new pipes??

    Now he'll send more here!!
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  3. #3
    Senior Member dman1200's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by moosetracks
    lose 40% through leaky pipes???

    With the millions we sent them each year, and Fox didn't put in new pipes??

    Now he'll send more here!!
    Maybe we can send them some birth control and documents on how to use it. Now there's an idea.
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    This is beyond pathetic...all those oil millions and more on the way if the news be true...and will not fix leaky pipes that are wasting 40% of a precious resource?

    RR
    The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed. " - Lloyd Jones

  5. #5
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    I think they need the 20 million illegal aliens to go home . You know they could all help plug the pipes with thier fingers and thumbs. This would provide full employment and solve Our problems too.


    no wait another brain flash!
    maybe they should bring back their ancient and noble religion and try human sacrifice?

  6. #6
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4818332.stm

    Mexico water marches turn violent
    Masked protesters have clashed with police at a global conference on water management in Mexico City.
    Police detained about 17 people as some rallies turned violent on the second day of the World Water Forum.

    More than 120 countries are represented at the conference, which has pledged to focus on ways to improve access to water for the world's poor.

    Mexican President Vicente Fox said water needed to be seen as a global heritage to which everyone had a right.

    But protesters claim the forum is being held in the interest of big corporations and their profits, rather than that of the poor.

    Petrol bombs

    Most of the demonstrations in Mexico City remained peaceful, however, with the violence blamed on a small number of radical youths.

    State news agency Notimex said police had arrested 17 people found carrying sticks, rocks and home-made petrol bombs, many of them wearing masks.
    At least one police car was destroyed in attacks by violent protesters, the Associated Press news agency reports.

    Large numbers of peaceful protesters included indigenous groups whose water is being diverted to supply big cities and those forced to live with sewage pollution.

    Water is scarce in Mexico City, with many of its inhabitants managing on just one hour of running water per week.

    Delfino Garcia Velazquez, a construction worker from the outskirts of the capital, said his community's scarce water resources had been taken over to supply new developments.


    "We just want to have a say over our own water and manage it ourselves, like we always have," he told AP.

    Delegates at the summit heard a call for large donations to help rebuild water systems in poor countries.

    Proposals for an international peacekeeping force to intervene in future conflicts over water were also put forward.

    But protesters said they felt the discussion of community-level water projects that was supposed to be at the heart of the summit was being overshadowed by big companies' interests in privatisation.
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    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/a ... 2003297976

    Mexican police block water march

    AP , MEXICO CITY
    Saturday, Mar 18, 2006,Page 6

    The first day of an international summit on the world's water crisis ended with rage and frustration as some 10,000 demonstrators -- many of whom say their lands or livelihoods are threatened by water policies -- were blocked from marching to the meeting site.

    Police stopped a massive march late on Thursday about a mile from the convention center where representatives of some 130 nations are attending the fourth World Water Forum. No major incidents were reported.

    The forum pledged to focus on the world's poor, many of whom live on less than 20 liters of water per day -- one-thirtieth of the daily usage in some developed nations. But protesters said the conference represented big corporations interested in running water systems for profit.

    Demonstrators came from the ranks of those who live daily with sewage pollution, Indians whose water is being diverted to supply big cities and farmers whose lands are scheduled to be flooded by hydroelectric projects.

    "You feel rage, you feel sadness," said Delfino Garcia Velazquez, a construction worker from the town of Tecamac on the outskirts of Mexico City, where tens of thousands of new housing units have sprung up in the last few years.

    Officials took over Tecamac's formerly community-managed water supply -- already over-stretched -- to supply the new developments.

    "We just want to have a say over our own water and manage it ourselves, like we always have," Garcia Velazquez said.

    Local initiatives and community-level projects to supply, conserve and treat water were supposed to be at the heart of the water summit, but the larger, international dimensions of the problem often overshadowed that.

    The forum heard a proposal for an international peacekeeping force to deal with future conflicts over water, as well as a call for massive donations to rebuild water systems in poor nations, in part to keep people from migrating to richer nations.

    "A lot of poor people are leaving their countries to go to rich countries," said Loic Fauchon, president of the non-governmental group the World Water Council.


    "Isn't it preferable, isn't it cheaper, to pay so that these people have water, sewage, energy, to keep open the possibility for them to stay in their [own] countries?" he asked.

    He suggested the creation of a peacekeeping force -- modeled after the UN "blue helmets" -- to intervene in water conflicts, but said "we don't want to override national governments, we just need a force that will take over."

    Mexico is no stranger to clashes over water. In 2004, armed Mazahua Indians took over a treatment plant and cut off part of the capital's supply to protest water extraction from their land.



    http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/232/1/

    Clashes Over Global Water Policy in Mexico City
    Written by Jeff Conant, Photos by Orin Langelle
    Sunday, 19 March 2006
    Every three years the World Water Council – a non-governmental entity based in Marseilles, France – holds the World Water Forum (WWF), an enormous event whose 4th incarnation is taking place now, between March 16 and 22, in Mexico City. This year’s gathering has already been marked by conflict and controversy.

    The WWF, which presents itself as a UN-led event in its pretensions to setting global water policy, is in reality something like a free-trade fair, corporate expo, and platform for the corporate water sector to set an agenda for the coming years. The President of the World Water Council, Rene Coulomb, is also President of Suez, one of the world’s top three water companies. The WWF is co-sponsored by the World Bank, Coca-Cola and other corporations, in collaboration with the water ministry of the host country, in this case, CONAGUA, Mexico’s water agency widely known for corruption and misuse of funds. It is for these reasons that Santiago Arconada, an official in Venezuela’s Ministry of Environment, likens the WWF to the World Economic Forum, calling it "the Davos of water."

    Not unlike the Davos Forum, this one has generated a notable reaction among progressive and popular movements, sparking a series of alternative events, protest marches, and actions concurrent with the WWF itself, mostly organized by the Mexican Coalition for the Right to Water (COMDA, by its Spanish acronym) along with an international coalition called the Friends of the Right to Water. The alternative events – coming to a close this week – have included a tribunal denouncing cases of water abuse worldwide, workshops on subjects ranging from social control of water services to analyses of the role of free trade and the World Bank in water issues, to dialogues on gender, health and indigenous cultural rights.

    Well over a thousand attendees of the alternative forum have used the venue as a platform to build a global movement for democratic, community controlled water access, to demand that the World Trade Organization stay out of the water sector, and to pressure the United Nations to draft a Convention on Water as a Human Right. The alternative forum will close with a declaration to articulate these and other goals with sign-on and commitments for action from the vast diversity of participating groups representing popular movements at the cutting edge of the water rights issue, from Argentina to Tanzania and from the Philippines to Canada.

    The opening day of the WWF was marked by a massive protest march through the streets of Mexico City. In the early evening of March 16th more than 20,000 mostly peaceful demonstrators braved a gauntlet of riot police and a 6.5 kilometer march route in the first ever international march in favor of the human right to water. From the Angel of the Independence in the trendy Zona Rosa neighborhood to the Banamex Center where the WWF was having it opening session, the march grew increasingly diverse and militant. Families, workers’ unions, popular organizations, sectarian groups, and international activists marched together chanting and singing through the streets. The question of access to water is not a marginal issue in this city of 26 million in a country known to be suffering from water scarcity and water stress. This was very much a march of the people.

    Among the workers and families marching, hundreds of youths with masks, sticks, and other black-block accoutrements taunted the police and several small scuffles broke out leading to the arrest, and eventual release of 26 youths allegedly armed with Molotov cocktails.

    The day of the march, Angel Martinez, a member of the Union of National Water Workers – la coordinadora en defensa del caracter publico del agua – discussed some of Mexico’s water problems:

    "The quality of water service in Mexico is terrible, and you can see it in the high indices of water-borne illnesses and even cancer in every state in Mexico. Apart from diarrhea diseases – the main cause of death in children in every state, we are finding high rates of cancer from heavy metals in the water in quantities that you Gringos would find terrifying. The PRI [the government party that ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century] has always used water to divide the people and advance its political agenda. For example, the local PRI government would give one part of a municipality a public water utility ‘for PRIISTAS’ and then tell the rest of the people, ‘if you want water, you can have it, just vote for the PRI.’

    "With President Fox the situation remains the same – everything is for sale, and if you want to be part of the power structure, it’s simple – just go along with the politics of selling everything."

    "The Coordinadora has tried to raise awareness of the water issue by organizing workshops and assemblies. This January we organized the first Assembly in Defense of of Land and Water and Against Privatization. What is it we hope to achieve? We want to make it known that our water is being privatized in a silent, underground way. It is not like electricity or oil, where the entire system is simply sold off in the light of day to private companies. In the case of water, CONAGUA gives concessions to industries as part of their manner of working – this is seen as absolutely normal. They will concession a local water utility or a water source to the beer industry, the paper industry, the textile industry and others, and these are not short-term concessions – these are concessions that last from 20 to 70 years."

    Summing up his opinion of the World Water Forum, Martinez said, "The organizers of the Forum think they are coming here to tell Mexico how to privatize water. But what is going to happen is that the Mexican government is going to say, no, let us show YOU how it’s done, without people even realizing!"

    At the second and third World Water Forums, the World Water Council was adamant in its refusal to recognize water as a right, taking the position instead that water is a human need – a need which then can be filled by the corporate water sector. Much headway has been made since then, with terminology shifting over the years from "privatization of water services" to "public-private partnerships," to the currently in vogue term "private sector participation." Whatever affect the March 16 demonstration and the alternative events have had, it is clear that popular pressure continues to force the World Water Council to find creative ways to push its corporate agenda.

    On March 19, the day the official Forum dedicated to the right to water, a group of the Friends of the Right to Water entered the convention center with a message. Some 50 international activists marched to a central location within the Water Forum, chanting and shaking water bottles filled with coins "to show that water has been privatized for the benefit of the few that were heavily represented within the World Water Forum," according to Miriam Torres of California’s Environmental Justice Coalition for Water.

    As the press rolled in, the banners rolled out: two banners saying "Right to Water Not Corporate Control" and "$H2000000.00?" were unfurled to a throng of cheers and chants, including from participants from the Forum itself. Santiago Arconada of Venezuela then read the Spanish version of the Declaration of the Right to Water from the alternative forum, and Lidy Nayul, a Filipina representing the group Focus on the Global South, read it in English to a high energy response from the crowd. Several speakers then elucidated the difference between the vision of water stewardship held by the alternative forum and that of the corporate event, followed by a march throughout the convention center followed by hundreds of participants, ending at a conference session on – what else? – the right to water.

    Anil Naidoo, a representative of the Council of Canadians and a chair of the Friends of the Right to Water commented on the action: "To allow the World Water Council to have their undemocratic meeting without our challenging it would have been a shame. We were trying to represent the international water justice movement, and I think our message was clear. As we will continue to do, we managed to assert our voice and our rights, even in a venue where our voice and our vision of water rights were not initially welcome."


    http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/060316/w031628.html

    Critics rail against 'stealth' privatization as World Water Forum opens
    15:43:41 EST Mar 16, 2006
    MARK STEVENSON


    MEXICO CITY (AP) - Water is a public good that all governments should guarantee to their people, Mexican President Vicente Fox told international experts gathered Thursday to tackle the world's water crises.

    As leaders from 121 countries launched the fourth World Water Forum at a convention centre in northern Mexico City, demonstrators began organizing protests against privatization, dam projects and water extraction from poor Indian communities.

    The protesters set up camp in downtown Mexico City in preparation for a march to the convention centre where Fox came to inaugurate the forum.

    Forum organizers set a goal of improving water access for the poor, but similar efforts in the past have failed: The poor pay vastly more money to private corporations for their water today than they did when the first global water forum was held in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1997.

    "Water is a public possession that all governments must guarantee," Fox said. "Mexico shares with all countries the goal of achieving a global balance of water usage."

    Non-governmental organizations and environmental activists have expressed concerns that governments are taking the easy way out by trying to solve water-supply problems with privatization.

    Outright privatization of water systems has been a hard sell since 2000, when thousands of Bolivians protested rate increases in water contracts held by foreign companies. The protests left seven demonstrators dead and forced the companies out of the country.

    Bottled water, on the other hand, has earned good profits and little attention.

    "It's in some way sort of a stealth privatization," said Janet Larsen, research director for the Earth Policy Institute, a private, Washington-based environmental group. Larsen noted that the biggest gains in bottled water sales are in developing countries.

    Mexico - where about 40 per cent of the country's 103 million residents live in poverty - is a poster child for the phenomenon: The country is now the second-largest consumer of bottled water in the world, just behind the United States in terms of volume and behind Italy in per capita consumption.

    Sales of bottled water in China jumped by more than 250 per cent between 1999 and 2004. They tripled in India and almost doubled in Indonesia, according to a study released by the institute. Worldwide, the industry is now worth about $115 billion Cdn per year.

    Dominated in many regions by giants like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle, bottled water - once a First World health indulgence or a symbol of European epicures - is fast becoming a staple of the Third World.

    It's not because people can suddenly afford the luxury; it's that the tap water in some countries is so bad that people are loath to use it, sometimes even for bathing.

    "You can't even brush your teeth without fearing that you're going to get who-knows-what infection," said Javier Bogantes, director of the Latin American Water Tribunal, which is holding mock "trials" of water-rights violations during the forum. "You can't take a shower, thinking about what the stuff in the water could do to your skin."

    Mexican officials, stung by the criticism that bottled water costs consumers thousands of times more than what tap water would, announced a campaign in early March to persuade people to drink from the tap.

    Two days after the announcement, the government's Health Department conceded that, given tap-water quality, people should boil it before drinking it.

    "The problem isn't that these (bottling) companies are supplying people" with water, Bogantes said. "The question is, given that governments have invested millions of dollars in water treatment and distribution systems, why aren't they supplying the population?"

    One problem is that many people are accustomed to paying little or nothing for municipal water in many developing countries, said German Martinez, director of the water system in Mexico City, where only about 40 per cent of customers pay on time. "What we really have to do is get people to pay for their water," he said.

    But Bogantes has doubts about whether the official water forum will consider noncommercial solutions.

    "The current that is trying to solve water supply through privatization has been strong at past forums," Bogantes said. "And it appears to be the tendency here at this forum."
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    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Senior Member dman1200's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian503a





















    Yet Bush wants an open border with this cesspool?
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