MEXICO: Water, Water Everywhere

To celebrate the Lerma River project, ending Mexico City’s immemorial water shortage, the Mexican government commissioned Diego Rivera to decorate the handsome new building through which the water would enter the capital. Rivera covered the inside of the fancy distribution chamber with sumptuous murals, some of them under water but shielded from water damage by mixing polystyrene with his pigments and coating the whole with transparent rubber (TIME, June 4). For the outside, he designed a large pool (see cut), in which reclines a giant sculpture of Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god. Rivera calls this “the first work of plastic art ever done to be seen from a helicopter.”

Last week, dedicating the $26 million waterworks, President Miguel Aleman spun a wheel that sent Lerma water surging down 40 miles of mountain ditches and tunnels and into the capital’s ducts. For the first time in modern history, Mexico City (pop. 2,334,000) had a 24-hour water supply (except in fashionable Chapultepec Heights, where installation of special pumps had not yet been completed).

Ironically, one big achievement only showed the need for another. With water-happy householders emptying an estimated 500,000 tubfuls down the drain the first day, the capital’s ancient and decrepit drainage system broke down. To make things worse, heavy rains flooded the streets. By week’s end, engineers were forced to cut the inflow of the new water by a third. They probably will hold it at the reduced level till the drainage system can be overhauled—at an estimated $60 million, more than twice the cost of the entire Lerma project.