People walk to the El Guavio Reservoir dock on April 18, 2024, in Gachalá, Colombia. Water reservoirs around Colombia faced low levels due to a major drought. (Photo by Diego Cuevas/Getty Images) In April 2024, more than 9 million residents of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city, were told to collect rainwater – if the city was lucky enough to experience a storm. Fed by the Guatiquía River, the Chingaza reservoir system, which supplies the area with 70% of its water, had reached critically low levels. To make what was left stretch through a dry spell with no clear end in sight, authorities divided the city into nine zones. Every day, one of the zones would go dry for 24 hours. No toilet would flush. No glass of water would be filled from the tap. Dishes would have to go unwashed. Bogotá Mayor Carlos Galan told residents they should be prepared to live with the water restrictions for a year. “The call is to take care of every drop of water,” the mayor’s office said, according to CBS News . A month later, 2,000 miles away in Mexico, the Cutzamala system of reservoirs reached historic lows . The water reserves supply a substantial portion of water to Mexico City’s 22 million residents, who faced mandatory rationing. Bogotá and Mexico City’s stories mirror those of cities across the globe. The amount of water stored in lakes worldwide has drastically and steadily decreased since 1992, according to a 2023 study published in the prestigious research journal Science. During those 30 years, freshwater lakes collectively lost an average of 600 cubic kilometers of water storage annually – 17 times the volume of Lake Mead , the largest reservoir in the United States. A global crisis The cause is a combination of human-caused overuse and […]
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