This mega-city is running out of water. What will 22 million people do when the taps run dry?

"The water shortage has really intensified this year," said Claudia Rojas Serna, a hydraulic engineer at the capital's Autonomous Metropolitan University. "What we are going through now is as bad as we have seen."

Now the ubiquitous water tankers are a lifeline as the 22 million people in this metropolitan area wait for rain and a little relief.

The jacarandas are in bloom across Mexico City, their blueish-purple flowers almost mocking in the stifling, polluted air of the dry season. Amid the season's shortages, officials have resorted to rationing. Millions now have only intermittent service — sometimes an hour or week or less of running water, residents say.

The wealthy can buy water from private suppliers. But that's not an option for most residents. For them, it takes a predawn scramble to reach sign-up sites to get their names on handwritten lists for the tanker trucks, known as pipas, or pipes.

"Without water, what do we do?" said Alejandra Rodríguez, 53, noting that a recent tanker was the first to arrive in almost two months at her Tlalpan housing complex, home to four families. "When I saw that the water truck was finally coming, I jumped for joy."

In a national election year, the water crisis has taken on a decidedly political cast, as protesters demanding water regularly block streets and highways.

Claudia Sheinbaum, a Berkeley-educated scientist who is the ruling-party candidate for president, boasts of having improved Mexico City's besieged water department as mayor from 2018 to 2023. But the opposition has dared her to publicly drink the water brought by tanker trucks, which the city says is potable.

Most residents say they drink only bottled water because they don't trust city water, whether it comes from trucks or taps in their homes. And, they add, with the current shortages, many have been forced to rely on the expensive bottled water for washing as well, recycling it later to flush toilets.

Critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum's mentor, warn ominously of a dry future.

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