{"id":82719,"date":"2018-09-16T01:02:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T08:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/mexico-city-keeps-sinking-as-its-water-supply-wastes-away"},"modified":"2018-09-16T01:02:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T08:02:23","slug":"mexico-city-keeps-sinking-as-its-water-supply-wastes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/mexico-city-keeps-sinking-as-its-water-supply-wastes-away","title":{"rendered":"Mexico City Keeps Sinking As Its Water Supply Wastes Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mexico-city-keeps-sinking-as-its-water-supply-wastes-away.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The ancient Aztecs first picked the spot. They built their city atop the huge lakes that filled this valley, leaving the natural freshwater supply intact around them. The city flooded back then too, but the Aztecs, probably the last civilization to properly manage this watershed, built a system of dikes to control the problem.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201chistoric mistake\u201d kicked in around the 1600s, when Hern\u00e1ndo Cort\u00e9s and his band of conquerors arrived. To make room for their expanding empire, over a few hundred years, they slowly but surely drained all the valley\u2019s lakes.<\/p>\n<p>By the 20th century, long after Mexico\u2019s independence from Spain, the fresh surface water was mostly gone and the hunt for new sources had taken over. <a href=\"http:\/\/centro.paot.org.mx\/documentos\/conagua\/compendio_del_agua_.pdf\">Hundreds of miles of pipes<\/a> now bring in about 30 percent of the city\u2019s water needs from faraway rivers and lakes. The rest comes from the valley\u2019s vast underground aquifer.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/09\/14\/647601623\/mexico-city-keeps-sinking-as-its-water-supply-wastes-away\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/09\/14\/647601623\/mexico-city-keeps-s...astes-away<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ancient Aztecs first picked the spot. They built their city atop the huge lakes that filled this valley, leaving the natural freshwater supply intact around them. The city flooded back then too, but the Aztecs, probably the last civilization to properly manage this watershed, built a system of dikes to control the problem. The [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}