ECRR Conference on RiverRestoration

Italy, Venice S. Servolo Island

16-21 June 2008

MEXICO CITY: FROM WATER AVENUES TO ASPHALTRIVERSCurrent condition and future perspectives of the Mexico CityRivers

Perló M.*, González A., Zamora I., Hernández L.

University Program on City Studies, National Autonomous University of Mexico*Corresponding author, e-mail:perlo@servidor.unam.mx

ABSTRACT

Mexico City developed in a hydrological basin where was formed a natural lakesystem. This situation made the city vulnerable to floods caused by its overflowinglakes. Thus, Mexico City and its relation to its lacustrine environment have beenconflictive ever since the Spaniards conquered the city in the Sixteen Century, andthrough our present day and age. Successive generations over four centuries builthydraulic works that aimed to empty the basin’s lakes through different tunnels. Thewar against water has characterized this city over the centuries. Once the Valley of Mexico dried up in the Twentieth Century, the city’s growing population polluted itsrivers and the best solution consisted of confining the waters to pipes andtransforming their beds into vehicular roadways.In this present day and age, all recovery or rehabilitation of a urban Mexico Cityriver demands taking its hydraulic history into account; that history structured thehuge drainage system that collects and expels lake water from the basin, as well asthe rivers confined in pipes, and the city’s rain and wastewater. The rescue of anurban Mexico City river is faced with the challenge of overcoming the prevailingcultural and technological inertia.We entered the Twenty-first Century with the idea of shifting paradigms andrecovering an urban river on the southwestern side of Mexico City. This projectintends to amend the historically conflictive relationship that has existed betweenwater and the capital city's residents, and thus start to support sustainability in one of the world’s largest cities.

Keywords:

Mexico City, hydraulic history; draining lakes, rivers confinement; riverrehabilitation.

Mexico City: from water avenues to asphalt rivers

INTRODUCTION. MEXICO CITY AND WATER: A GREATPARADOX

The Mexico basin was a natural endorreic basin, that is to say, a closedbasin in a valley with a vast system of lakes formations, but it has become anartificially open and semi-deserted basin. The Mexico Basin has beenexploited by successive generations that succeeded in drastically modifyingits hydrological operation over the last four centuries.The war against flooding has been a constant since the city of Tenochtitlan was founded and in the current Mexico City metropolitan area.This constant battle waged against the excess of water over the centuries,derived in a great paradox in the Twentieth Century: while Mexico Citysucceeded in overcoming its flood and full outlet nightmares, the valleylacked enough water to meet the growing demand of its explosiveurbanization. We must bear in mind that Mexico City went from having twoto 20 million inhabitants in just six decades. In principle, the efficientexpulsion of land and rain waters from the Valley of Mexico allowed forurban and industrial development of the metropolis through the extraction of underground water sources. However, once these underground sources werefound to be insufficient in the 1940s, city authorities built an aqueduct toimport water from a neighboring basin. Later on, in the 1980s, the city builta second aqueduct to transfer water from another neighboring basin. Thesetwo aqueducts (the Lerma and Cutzamala systems) supply approximately30% of the potable water that Mexico City requires.Rivers did not represent a possible water supply solution for the citythroughout the Twentieth Century. On the contrary, their status as seasonalrivers and polluted by the cities that were incorporated into the capital city’smetropolitan area, caused these to be perceived as a health hazard for thepopulation. The solution to the problem consisted of laying pipes to confineand discharge the contaminated waters and rebuild the structures left by theirold channels to transform them into avenues for vehicular transportationpurposes. Hence, the different drainage works caused rivers to be classifiedas wastewater. The city condemned the rivers to a murky death: their mildwater currents were reduced by concrete and asphalt.The present is charged with history. Any project to rescue the urbanrivers within this context demands a full understanding of the long-termprocesses that have had an impact on hydraulic history in the Mexico CityValley, the cultural history of the type of urbanization and its relation withthe environment. The rescue of an urban river in Mexico City represents aserious challenge that is limited not only to technology and methodologies,but is affected primarily by historical, social and cultural factors.

Perló M., González A., Zamora I., Hernández L.

2. FROM AN AMERICAN VENICE TO A THIRSTYMEGALOPOLIS

The Mexico Basin consolidated itself as an endorreic formation on thegeological horizon of the Tertiary; that is to say, close to 9,600 squarekilometers were hydrologically enclosed to house lake lowlands 2,250meters above sea level. Five lakes were then formed and trapped amongmountains and hills that became one great lake during the rainy season. Thelakes known as the Zumpango and Xaltocan lakes flowed on the north sideof the city; while the Xochimilco and Chalco flowed on the southern side of the Valley, each at a different altitude, but each intercommunicated as theyflowed into the Texcoco River at the center of the valley. The lakes were fedby the runoffs that flowed from the high areas through torrential rivers andthe summertime rain and precipitation that ranges between 1500 mm and600 mm. The rivers were between one and five meters deep and coveredbetween 1500 and 2000 square kilometers, close to one-fifth of the totalsurface of the basin.The Mexica civilization faced cyclical floods that decimated itspopulation. Nonetheless, the solutions propounded to face these catastrophesnever questioned the cultural strategy of leveraging the benefits the lakesprovided. The construction in 1449 of a huge 16-kilometer stone dyke toprotect the Greater Tenochtitlan from the curse of the floods is attributed toNetzahualcoyotl, king of Texcoco. This dyke was built to keep theoverflowing Zumpango and Texcoco lakes.Once the Europeans conquered the Mexico City Valley, they modifiedthe mentalities and the practices regarding the ecosystem. The complexlacustrine life became a problem for the Spaniard’s conception of a city. Theviceregal capital was founded over the ruins of Tenochtitlan and faced thewater’s destructive from its very creation. The chronicles report floods of great magnitudes in 1555, 1580, 1604 and 1607. The New Spain policy withrespect to the valley’s water did not contemplate its retention, rather theradical modification of the Valley’s ecosystem. The city’s first ambitiousproject to artificially discharge the waters of the Cuauhtitlán River through atunnel drilled in the northern part of the basin was completed in 1608. Thisfirst artificial solution is known as the

Tajo de Nochistongo

(NochistongoTagus). This hydraulic work in the Seventeenth Century set off a strategythat is maintained through this day and age to expel the lakes and rivers fromthe Mexico Basin. The Nochistongo Tagus protected the viceregal capitalfrom floods that originated from the rivers and lakes from the north of thevalley; however, it could not protect it from the floods originating from theeast, south and center of the valley.In the Nineteenth Century, General Porfirio Díaz undertook a seconddrilling process to drain the basin in the year 1900 in the TequixquiacMountain; however, flooding continued during the first half of the Twentieth