Some Monterrey residents are undertaking “pilgrimages” in search of water due to the harsh restrictions currently in place in the metropolitan area of the Nuevo León capital.
As of early June, running water has only been available six hours per day – if at all – as authorities seek to alleviate water shortages precipitated by drought in the northern border state.
A Milenio TV report said that hundreds of residents of Monterrey and surrounding municipalities are going to parks and squares to search for taps with running water where they can fill up buckets, 20-liter water bottles called garrafones and other receptacles. Others line up for hours to get water from water tank trucks called pipas.
Milenio TV footage showed some residents fighting and squabbling over limited quantities of available water.
In the municipality of Guadalupe, which borders Monterrey to the east, one woman lining up Tuesday to get water from a pipa said that she hadn’t had any water since Saturday. “We’ve been here since early [in the day],” Juany Vega said.
Some other Guadalupe residents walked up to three kilometers to get water from the same tanker truck, according to a Milenio newspaper report. They arrived with strollers, shopping carts and even wheelbarrows so they wouldn’t have to lug filled water containers home.
“I’ve come with a stroller, I walked two kilometers,”said Luis Santiago. “… There’s no water in other places.”
Restaurants in the Monterrey metropolitan area and other parts of Nuevo León are also struggling to cope with harsh water restrictions.
“Of the 20,000 restaurants in the entity, only 30% can store water in cisterns or tanks during the … hours when water is supplied,” said the Nuevo León president of the national restaurant association Canirac.
“[The other] 70% have been affected [by the restrictions] and 10% of those have closed because they can’t continue operating without supply of the liquid,” Daniel García Rosales said.
With reports from Milenio
