Edmundo Gamas, executive director at the Mexican Institute of Infrastructure Development discusses why there is a bottleneck of finance reaching water projects and what he is doing to fix the situation...
MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Efforts are underway to address the high leakage rates across Mexico’s water networks.
Edmundo Gamas, executive director of the Mexican Institute of Infrastructure Development (IMEXDI) said the organisation is working with companies on a “novel approach”, which incentivises companies on the amount of non-revenue water (NRW) they are able to recover.
You can watch our video interview with Gamas above, conducted after he had spoken on a high-level panel on the changing nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs) at the recent Aquatech Mexico event.
He said: “Leakage in Mexico’s water system is very high – our infrastructure is very old and very decrepit, therefore there is an enormous amount of leakage.”
Leakage levels have been estimated at around 40 percent in Mexico City. The capital has over 1000km of main pipes and a secondary network of more than 12,000km pipelines yet the ageing infrastructure means that 11 cubic metres of water are lost per second.
IMEXDI, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation is also working with municipalities to conduct water registries, he said, which are “politically unpopular” but will mean accurate water bills can be issued.
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