Floods due to lack of foresight

Pres. to keep working with Peña, Ebrard

Martes, 9 de Febrero de 2010

Torrential rain from several different weather systems inflicted damage on several Mexican states. BY MARÍA DEL CARMEN MARTÍNEZ JIMÉNEZ
TOLUCA –President Felipe Calderón on Monday lamented that preceding governments didn’t invest more money to take measures to avoid floods, such as those that have affected people living in Mexico City and Mexico State.
In a working tour in Toluca, the capital of Mexico State, Calderón said that the federal government is investing more than 15 billion pesos on a drainage system in the Federal District.
He said that his government will continue working “elbow to elbow” with Mexico State Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto and local authorities to aid the thousands of people affected by flooding following heavy rains in much of the country last week.
A mudslide in Temascaltepec, Mexico State has killed at least 13 people after days of heavy rain that had already caused flooding and fatalities elsewhere in the country.
The mudslide crushed several cars on a road near the small town on the route from Mexico City to the popular weekend town of Valle de Bravo. As of Monday afternoon, two of the deceased hadn’t been identified.
Police said it was likely several more people were still buried in their vehicles.
Torrential rain had been pounding much of Mexico for days, triggering mudslides in the Pacific state of Michoacan that killed at least a dozen people, causing rivers to break their banks and setting off flooding in the capital and nearby states.
Mudslides and flooding would have been avoided, Calderón said, if authorities in previous administrations had invested more in drainage and sewage infrastructure, such as the East Drainage Tunnel, which will span 62 km and will measure seven meters in diameter when finished.
This massive sewage main will stretch from the edges of the Federal District and the Ecatepec Municipality in the State of Mexico. Construction, according to the National Water Commission, is directly creating 7,000 jobs and indirectly creating 5,000 jobs.
“With these types of emergencies, runoff from mountainous areas finds its natural channel, but these enormous projects will give a definitive solution to this problem,” Calderón said. “It will take time, but a decision this important is worth making now. If it would have been done many years ago, this could have been avoided.”

Comments

Loading..
Use Policies

To participate with your comments you must belong to the community.