Cutzamala, the Mexico City area’s main water supply system, is getting its first upgrade in 4 decades

The Cutzamala system, which provides drinking h2o to Mexico City and Mexico state, is undergoing its archetypal large upgrade successful 40 years, with an concern of implicit 680 cardinal pesos (US $39.6 million), the manager of the Valley of Mexico Water Basin Authority (OCAVM), Citlalli Peraza Camacho, announced connected Tuesday.

The concern is expected to widen Cutzamala’s lifespan for different 20 years, successful bid to proceed providing drinking h2o to 5 cardinal residents successful the Valley of Mexico.

The Valle de Bravo Dam, officially the Miguel Alemán Reservoir, successful Mexico authorities is 1 of the 3 large dams that provender the Cutzamala h2o proviso system, which is presently undergoing a large upgrade. (agua.org.mx/X)

“The Cutzamala strategy has immoderate of the largest pumping instrumentality successful the world, and it typically has a lifespan of 15 to 20 years,” Peraza said. “No portion of instrumentality of this size has ever been replaced. Plus, the pieces are unsocial and haven’t been manufactured anyplace else.”

The Cutzamala’s h2o is collected successful the Valle de Bravo, El Bosque and Villa Victoria dams successful México state, and past transported 125 km to the system’s core, the Los Berros hydraulic h2o attraction plant, which is the largest successful Latin America. There it undergoes a purification process earlier being pumped a further 95 km to Mexico City and different destinations successful México state.

In 2025, the National Water Commission (Conagua) recovered that 1 of Los Berros’ 35 pumping units had sizeable deterioration and needed replacing. The bureau has since ordered 10 caller spherical valves from Asia to upgrade the strategy astatine a outgo of 259 cardinal pesos ($15.1 million).

Although the strategy was functioning, aboriginal diagnosis helps forestall aboriginal shutdowns, particularly successful this case, due to the fact that the valves instrumentality 24 months to manufacture, Pereza told the paper La Jornada.

Another 188 cardinal pesos ($10.9 million) volition beryllium spent connected the renewal of 7 rotors, arsenic good arsenic 4 pumping units with a capableness of 1,700 liters per second.

The task got underway successful 2025 and has present reached 20% completion, according to Conagua.

Other plans see the modernization of the Supervisory Control Center, the “brain of the Cutzamala system,” whose equipment, which dates backmost to 2000, is present obsolete.

The extremity is to migrate to a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) automation system, which has a projected lifespan of 10 years.

With reports from La Jornada, Milenio and La Razón