Mexico City is sinking. Home to 21 million people, a place that consumes approximately 287 billion gallons of water every year. The city has sunk over 32 feet in the last 60 years because 70% of the water on which people rely is extracted from the aquifer below the city.
"There's no fixing it. Once land is subsided, it's subsided," journalist Andrea Noel told producer Alan Sanchez in the video below from Fusion.
The water table is going down at a rate of one meter (3.2 feet) each year. As the number of people living in the city grows and water demand continues to increases, the problem will only be exacerbated.
"It needs to be stopped because it's too late to be remedied," Noel said. "The city needs to find a way to figure out their water problem. They really need to look into alternatives like collecting rainwater, which makes so much sense in a city like this, which gets so much rainfall every year."
Julia's Mexico City
It isn't only Mexico City either. A recent NASA analysis found that four billion people—approximately two-thirds of the world population—are at risk as water tables drop worldwide.
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