Water culture and statistics

Water Culture in Mexico

  • In Mexico, there’s a natural average availability of 474, 637 hm³ a year, that makes it one of the countries with low availability worldwide.
  • There’s around 653 underground water bodies in the country, and 104 are being over exploited. Of the total of these water bodies, more than 60% of the underground water is extracted to suffice all of mankind’s needs.
  • Due to this over exploitation, the underground water reserve is being diminished at a rhythm of nearly 6km³ a year.
  • In Mexico, only 20% of the water used is treated, and so a large quantity of waste water is disposed into rivers, lakes, lagoons or the coast without previous treatment.
  • The two parameters that allow us to evaluate the quality of water is the Biochemical Demand of Oxygen (DBO5) and the Chemical Demand of Oxygen (DQO).
  • The administrative regions that have the higher percentages of pollution in their stations by Biochemical Demand of Oxygen (DBO5) are: Valle de México and Sistema Cutzamala (32%), Golfo Centro (10.8%) and Balsas (5.1%). And nationwide, 5.3% of the monitoring stations show a high level of pollutants; 14.3% is polluted; 15.7 has an acceptable quality; 12.9% good quality and 51.8% has an excellent quality
  • Only two administrative regions show high concentration of pollutants with Chemical Demand of Oxygen (DQO), these being: Valle de México and Sistema Cutzamala con 62.5% and the Balsas Region with 21.5%. The pollution level appears in 4 regions: Baja California Peninsula(56.3%), Balsas (35.7%), Lerma-Santiago-Pacífico (35.6%) y Pacífico Norte (28.6%).
  • The waste water generated by urban centers contained 2.17 million tons of DBO5 in year 2003; 1.73 of these tons are collected by municipal sewage and only 0.51 are removed by water treating systems.
  • Industry in Mexico generated a polluted discharge of 9.5 million tons of DBO5, but only 1.01 million tons are removed from the water with their water treatment systems.

Global Water Culture

  • Every 22nd of March World Water Day is celebrated sin 1993.
  • It is estimated that the annual average available water in the world is 1,386 million cubic kilometers. While only 35 million cubic kilometers are freshwater (2.5%). From the existing freshwater, 70% is not available because it’s in form of glaciers, ice and snow; 10.5 million cubic kilometers are underground and only 135 thousand kilometers are lakes, rivers and humity in soil and water.
  • It is expected that climatic change will affect the lack of water resources. It is estimated that the snow flow, in mountain regions where a sixth part of the population lives, will be altered when the global temperature will increase in 2 to 4 °C.
  • The last century the global population multiplied by threefold, while the water extractions did sixfold, which has translated to a great pressure over the water resources in the world.
  • Energy generation has increased from 6,115 to 12,267 million tons equivalent to oil in the period from 1973 to 2008. Water is involved in this generation for cooling thermoelectrical plants and with hydroelectrical plants. Hydroelectrical energy is an renewable source of energy as is geothermic, solar and wind.
  • According to the WHO (World Health Organization), by the year 2008 about 884 million people didn’t have access to treated water sources, while 2600 million didn’t have access to sanitation services.
  • The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.5 million children die from diarrhea like diseases annually, this happening specifically in developing countries.

Sources:

INEGI, http://www.inegi.gob.mx/inegi/contenidos/espanol/prensa/contenidos/estadisticas/2006/agua2006.pdf

CONAGUA, 
http://www.conagua.gob.mx/Contenido.aspx?n1=3&n2=60&n3=87&n4=37