Inundation in Mexico City
Analyzing Flooding Related to Climate Change In Mexico City
Figure 1. Floodwaters impede pedestrian access in Mexico City Credit: AP Photos/ Eduardo Verdugo
Climate Change Atlas of the Americas (ACCA)
Changing weather events cause heavy rains. These heavy rains paired with large scale urbanization and urban sprawl, lead to large flooding events. As climate change influences weather patterns, Mexico City must contend with a potent force of the water cycle, extreme flooding.
During heavy rain events, city streets flood and many people are left stranded. Not only do rains disrupt traffic, but they also damage infrastructure and disrupt businesses. Heavy rains also overflow sewer mains and release dangerous contaminants into the environment.
Figure 3. Mexico City limits polygon of topography showing the mountains on the outskirts of the city in brown and lower valley areas in green . The mountains completely surround the city but are not shown in the extent of this figure. Each line depicts 100 meters in elevation change (Zambrano, Pacheco-Muñoz, and Fernández 2017)
This polygon shows the topographical features within the geographic boundary of Mexico City without buildings, roads, and population features. The green areas in the map above represent areas of lower elevation and the darker brown represents areas of higher elevation. Each contour line represents a one hundred meter change in elevation. The highest area in the city boundary is 3, 932 feet while the lowest area is 2,212 feet. This represents a change in elevation of 1,720 feet over a relatively small area. This steep slope means Mexico City is located in a basin and is thus more prone to flooding because water flows down from the mountain areas and collects in the lower elevations.
Figure 5. Water levels and from 1500 to 2010 and construction efforts to divert flooding occurrences (Tellman et al. 2018)
Flood control has been heavily implemented through projects like dike construction, drainage canals leading outside the city (Tellman et al. 2018). In Figure 5, above, gray represents land while the light blue represents water. The green line surrounding the lake denotes the watershed, the Basin of Mexico. The black polygons depict urban expansion. As you can see, urban expansion exponentially increases from the 1920's into 2010. The orange line depicts a large trench that was dug in 1789 to move water away from the city. By the 1900s, the Grand Canal, depicted as a yellow line, drained the lake even further. The water level change can be seen from 1800 to 1900 due to draining from the Nochistongo Trench and Gran Canal. In 1975, Another draining feature was constructed, depicted in red. Because of limited water now, water must be imported through pipes from areas beyond the mountain range bounding the city. The water comes from both towns Lerma and Cutzamala and growing water needs force city officials to keep moving water in to the city from surrounding areas.
Figure 6. The East Emission Tunnel runs across Mexico City and helps divert flood waters (Tellman et al. 2018)
Presently, a newly instituted project called the East Emission Tunnel, shown in Figure 6., prevents flooding (Tellman et al. 2018). Without this tunnel, the Mexico City Basin Commission estimates that floods could reach up to 5m in depth and flood an area equivalent to 30,392 soccer fields (Tellman et al. 2018). If this flooding were to occur, it would cover a large part of the city and seriously disrupt social and economic factors in the city. At close to 61 kilometers long and large enough to drive a semi truck through, the East Emission tunnel helps move flood waters through the city. This infrastructure comes at a cost of several hundreds of millions of dollars and illustrates the importance the officials of Mexico City place on diverting floodwaters from urbanized areas.
Figure 7. Flood risk models. Model A shows flood risk in small rain events and Model B shows flood risk in a large rain event. Large amounts of water in a smaller area means more destruction overall. (Zambrano, Pacheco-Muñoz, and Fernández 2017)
Mexico City faces land sinking due to high water use and aquifer depletion and thus becomes an ideal spot for water to collect (Zambrano, Pacheco-Muñoz, and Fernández 2017). This places many areas in Mexico City at a high risk for water damage. As you can see in the flood risk maps in Figure 7. above, the risk for flooding is greatest in the lowland areas of the city which are depicted in bright red, orange, and yellow and lesser so in the more mountainous areas which are depicted in green. The map on the left shows areas that would be affected during a small rain event while the map on the right depicts areas that would be most affected by a large rain event. Since water moves faster during a large rain event, water tends to concentrate more quickly and affect fewer areas but with more destructive force. This explains why the small rain event is more spread out while the large rain event is more concentrated.
When looking at the land cover types in the city, hard surfaces like concrete and asphalt cover much of the area and don't let water soak back into the ground. This contributes to higher risk areas (Zambrano, Pacheco-Muñoz, and Fernández 2017).
The rising unpredictability and timing of rainstorms to the afternoon due to climatic changes means that floods are expected to disrupt more human activities and cause more damage to infrastructure because people are going home from work and large water flows cause traffic disruptions (Ochoa et al. 2015). These changes can be seen in the graphs below.
Figure 13. Floods damage infrastructure like sewer pipes and allow contaminated water to flood city streets in the Aguas Negras neighborhood. (Janet Jarman)
Flooding causes sewage and other illness inducing variables to be released at a rapid rate during rain events and citizens are more likely to come into contact with contaminated water during flooding (Baeza et al. 2018). In Figure 13., a child carries a younger child across a contaminated street after flood waters have receded.
Poor public health, caused by flooding, can negatively affect poor communities because their money is spent on treating medical illnesses. This also stresses city services, which are spent on solving immediate medical cases. Until infrastructure can be improved, the central areas of Mexico will experience higher levels of disease than other areas of the city.
According to a report on government spending, governmental organizations have failed to unite against addressing flooding problems in Mexico City due to financial concerns (Baeza et al. 2018).
Figure 14. Infrastructural problems, such as cracked streets and broken pipes, due to water related destruction shown in Mexico City. This picture was taken in September of 2018. (Carrie Kahn/NPR)
Government official serve for short terms of less than five years and are often more interested in gaining higher positions of power than making changes and this leads to unsolved infrastructural problems and neglected areas in the city (Eakin et al. 2016, 331).
Bibliography
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