PBS高端访谈:墨西哥城正面临日益严峻的用水危机

 　　PBS高端访谈:墨西哥城正面临日益严峻的用水危机GWEN IFILL: Violent protests continued in Mexico today. Demonstrators clashed with police in Acapulco, as anger mounted over the disappearance¹ of 43 students.

　　Late last week, three men detained in the case admitted to setting fire to the victims. Government investigators² said they found dozens of charred³ bodies. They are still working on confirming the identities.

　　Many throughout the country have been critical Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's response.

　　Tonight, we take a look at another less attention-getting, but still severe, issue facing Mexico, the water shortage in its capital city.

　　"NewsHour" special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro filed this report, part of our series Agents for Change.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Every day, long lines of water tankers⁵ fill up at pumping stations, 4,000 gallons on each truck, enough for two homes for about a week.

　　It's not an emergency or drought. This is normal practice in Mexico City. With a population of 22 million, it's like filling a swimming pool with a teacup.

　　Environment scientist Juan Jose Santibanez did the math for one large neighborhood.

　　JUAN JOSE SANTIBANEZ, Environment Scientist (through interpreter): In Iztapalapa, there are 1,000 trucks distributing water to two million people, which is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of those people.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's expensive, inefficient⁶ and customers like Sylvestre Fernandez, a struggling cab driver, are not satisfied.

　　SYLVESTRE FERNANDEZ (through interpreter): Sometimes, it takes or up to five days after we request it. And sometimes we can't buy other things, like diapers for the baby, because we have to pay for water.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The alternative, really the only choice for many of the poorest is self-service from a municipal tap.

　　Amelia Segura Trudges⁷ down and then back up a steep mountain, jerricans on the back of three donkeys, which her husband, Andulico Bonilla, helps unload.

　　ANDULICO BONILLA (through interpreter): It's really hard. It takes 20 minutes to go down the hill, and then we have to walk back up. We collect enough for about three days when it rains. When it's dry, we need more.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The city struggles to meet the pressing demand. Water is pumped up from aquifers⁹ and also piped in from a neighboring province. Its purified in plants like this, but here there's also a shortage of trust. Mexicans consume more bottled water than any other nation.

　　One reason is that less 10 percent of the metro¹⁰ area's sewage is treated. The rest flows in open canals, often washed up with rains that flood this bowl-shaped city, overwhelming many homes in poor neighborhoods.

　　These pictures are from a film documentary called "H2Omx." The director, Jose Cohen, said he wanted to inject a sense of urgency about this growing crisis.

　　JOSE COHEN, Documentary director: We found out that it's an extremely serious health emergency, and there is a lot of social injustice¹¹ going on.

　　JUAN JOSE SANTIBANEZ (through interpreter): There is a very high probability that, by 2020, there will be a mini-revolution, at least in Mexico City.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: No one disagrees the dwindling¹² supply and growing population are leading to a severe crisis. Yet there seems to be little momentum¹³ to do something about it. For one thing, where to start?

　　Work crews are shutting off the water supply to this neighborhood so they can plug a leak a few hundred yards down the street. The problem is not that there are a few big leaks, but rather thousands of small ones across miles and miles of underground piping. Mexico City loses 1,000 liters of water per second through this system.

　　JOSE COHEN: Forty percent of the water that is available to the valley is lost to leaks.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Almost half of it.

　　JOSE COHEN: Almost half of it. And 60 percent of the water that we use comes from the aquifer⁸, the one that is drying.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Not only do people not get water. Extracting it from aquifers below is causing the ground to sink.

　　You see evidence of it in buildings that are tilting¹⁴ precariously¹⁵, as this one is doing in the basilica of Guadalupe Complex, one of Mexico City's most historic landmarks¹⁶. Geologists¹⁷ say this city has sunk more than 40 feet in the last half-century.

　　Enrique Lomnitz moved back to his native Mexico from the U.S. five years ago, anxious to put his industrial design degree from MIT to work.

　　ENRIQUE LOMNITZ, Engineer/Entrepreneur: Everywhere I went, people were talking about water, about how they used to have more water, how they used to have higher-quality water, how water was getting more expensive. I started thinking about, well, to me, it was a very obvious question. Why aren't people using rainwater?

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So Lomnitz started a social enterprise that installs rainwater collection and storage systems in businesses and homes.

　　ENRIQUE LOMNITZ: This part of the city gets very high rainfall. It gets up to 1,500 millimeters. So a house like the one we're in right now, for example, has 240 meters of roof, which is about enough for two low-income families to go all year.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In five years, Lomnitz's group has installed 1,500 such systems, not many, he admits, but there are big obstacles. Homeowners simply can't or won't pay the $1,000 cost. As for the government helping¹⁸ out?

　　ENRIQUE LOMNITZ: I have had people ask me for bribes¹⁹, for example. They could put up a couple hundred thousand rainwater harvesting systems in their municipality, and they will basically say, you — this project will go to you, but, you know, what's going to come to me?

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Another complication, politicians are limited to just one term.

　　ENRIQUE LOMNITZ: So, as soon as people take office, they're actually looking for a future somewhere else. I think if all of the buildings were harvesting rainwater, I think we'd be talking about at least something like 30 percent of the city's water needs could be coming from rainwater harvesting.

　　ENRIQUE LOMNITZ: But Ramon Aguirre, who heads the city's water department, thinks that number is much lower, since rainfall varies widely across the city.

　　RAMON AGUIRRE, Director, Mexico City Water Department (through translator): It is less than 10 percent, and that is being generous. To build infrastructure²⁰ to capture the water, store the water, purify the water, it's just not financially viable²¹.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: His department has developed a comprehensive repair plan.

　　RAMON AGUIRRE (through interpreter): We're talking about collecting rainwater, fixing the leaks in the whole system, increasing the use of recycled water, which can be used for bathing and recharging the aquifers and generally lowering consumption of water.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The problem? A price tag that is four times the amount of money he gets in his department.

　　RAMON AGUIRRE (through interpreter): Water is a basic service, and it's very politicized. We have one of the lowest rates in the country, when we should have some of the highest, but they are politically set. To compensate²² for that very low rates, we need very big subsidies²³ from the government, which we don't get.

　　FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So, for the foreseeable future, he expects to worry more about containing social unrest, dispatching more tanker⁴ and repair trucks, like he does today, than about the long-term problems that are literally²⁴ sinking one of the world's largest cities.

　　In Mexico City, I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro for the "NewsHour."GWEN IFILL: Fred's reporting is a partnership²⁵ with the Under-Told Stories Project at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.

1 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

2 investigators   

n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
• The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 tanker   

n.油轮

参考例句：

• The tanker took on 200,000 barrels of crude oil.油轮装载了二十万桶原油。
• Heavy seas had pounded the tanker into three parts.汹涌的巨浪把油轮撞成三载。

5 tankers   

运送大量液体或气体的轮船[卡车]( tanker的名词复数 )； 油轮； 罐车； 油槽车

参考例句：

• They should stop offloading waste from oil tankers into the sea. 他们应当停止从油轮上往海里倾倒废弃物。
• The harbour admits large tankers and freighters. 这个港口容得下巨型油船和货轮。

6 inefficient   

adj.效率低的，无效的

参考例句：

• The inefficient operation cost the firm a lot of money.低效率的运作使该公司损失了许多钱。
• Their communication systems are inefficient in the extreme.他们的通讯系统效率非常差。

7 trudges   

n.跋涉，长途疲劳的步行( trudge的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. 她吃力地跋涉，schlepps、trains、drags、trascines重荷。 来自互联网
• Matvey, who has not tasted food or drink all day, trudges up the hill again. 玛特威从一大早起就什么也没吃过，什么也没喝过，这时候却又爬上坡去。 来自互联网

8 aquifer   

n.含水土层

参考例句：

• An aquifer is a water-bearing rock stratum such as sandstone and chalk.地下蓄水层是一些有水的岩石层，如沙岩和白垩岩。
• The wine region's first water came from an ancient aquifer.用来灌溉这个地区葡萄园的第一批水来自古老的地下蓄水层。

9 aquifers   

n.地下蓄水层，砂石含水层( aquifer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• And in Africa, the aquifers barely recharge at all. 非洲的地下水开采以后几乎得不到补充。 来自时文部分
• Aquifers have water contents over 30%. 含水层的水含过30％。 来自辞典例句

10 metro   

n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售)

参考例句：

• Can you reach the park by metro?你可以乘地铁到达那个公园吗？
• The metro flood gate system is a disaster prevention equipment.地铁防淹门系统是一种防灾设备。

11 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

12 dwindling   

adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The number of wild animals on the earth is dwindling. 地球上野生动物的数量正日渐减少。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is struggling to come to terms with his dwindling authority. 他正努力适应自己权力被削弱这一局面。 来自辞典例句

13 momentum   

n.动力，冲力，势头；动量

参考例句：

• We exploit the energy and momentum conservation laws in this way.我们就是这样利用能量和动量守恒定律的。
• The law of momentum conservation could supplant Newton's third law.动量守恒定律可以取代牛顿第三定律。

14 tilting   

倾斜，倾卸

参考例句：

• For some reason he thinks everyone is out to get him, but he's really just tilting at windmills. 不知为什么他觉得每个人都想害他，但其实他不过是在庸人自扰。
• So let us stop bickering within our ranks.Stop tilting at windmills. 所以，让我们结束内部间的争吵吧！再也不要去做同风车作战的蠢事了。

15 precariously   

adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地

参考例句：

• The hotel was perched precariously on a steep hillside. 旅馆危险地坐落在陡峭的山坡上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The phone was perched precariously on the window ledge. 电话放在窗台上，摇摇欲坠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 landmarks   

n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址）

参考例句：

• The book stands out as one of the notable landmarks in the progress of modern science. 这部著作是现代科学发展史上著名的里程碑之一。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The baby was one of the big landmarks in our relationship. 孩子的出世是我们俩关系中的一个重要转折点。 来自辞典例句

17 geologists   

地质学家，地质学者( geologist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Geologists uncovered the hidden riches. 地质学家发现了地下的宝藏。
• Geologists study the structure of the rocks. 地质学家研究岩石结构。

18 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

19 bribes   

n.贿赂( bribe的名词复数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂v.贿赂( bribe的第三人称单数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• corrupt officials accepting bribes 接受贿赂的贪官污吏

20 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

21 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

22 compensate   

vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消

参考例句：

• She used her good looks to compensate her lack of intelligence. 她利用她漂亮的外表来弥补智力的不足。
• Nothing can compensate for the loss of one's health. 一个人失去了键康是不可弥补的。

23 subsidies   

n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• European agriculture ministers failed to break the deadlock over farm subsidies. 欧洲各国农业部长在农业补贴问题上未能打破僵局。
• Agricultural subsidies absorb about half the EU's income. 农业补贴占去了欧盟收入的大约一半。 来自《简明英汉词典》

24 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

25 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。