Oaxaca is a fairly modern city and offers everything you could expect to find in a city of its size in the US. Oaxaca state however is the 2nd poorest of Mexico's 31 states. I'm not sure how much this dictates its water quality in comparison to the water quality of other places in Mexico. I just don't have enough experience with the rest of Mexico to speak with any authority.
However after being in Oaxaca for 3 months I feel I can speak about its water quality generally. First of all the adage to not drink the water is not any sort of exageration. I don't even know one Mexican who drinks the water. There is a different distribution system of drinking water here. There are water trucks that deliver water in 5 gallon containers to homes and in bulk to businesses and public buildings. Our host mother Ruth just texts the water guy whenever we're running low on water.
The whole problem with the water is the pipes. At the water plants here they treat water to similar standards as we have in the US. The thing is, Mexicans had indoor plumbing and large public waterworks when we were all still using outhouses in the US. However, the pipes have not been updated very much. They're old. They leak. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if they didn't run alongside sewage lines (which also leak) and under streets that accept chemicals and oil from the roadways. So everything else in the groundwater, gets into the clean water. People that actually live right beside water treatment facilites drink the water, because it's fine. It hasn't been contaminated yet.
The rest have to buy their drinking water from another source. What really sucks though is that, unless you have an in-line water filtration system in your home, you have to use the contaminated water for washing your hands, washing your clothes and showering. Sometimes we see the film of roadway oil on the top of the toilet water after it's been flushed. So we're washing our clothes in water that could contain oil, chemicals, sewage, etc. What we really don't enjoy thinking about and talking about is that the same water is coming from the showerhead. Luckily I haven't noticed any residues on my body after showering, but I have once smelled sewage strongly while I was showering. Maybe it was sewer gas escaping the trap. Either way it grossed me out so much.
Long story short, we can't wait to get home and shower in clean, even drinkable, water. Moral of the story: thank your lucky stars we backwards Americans didn't start installing large-scale public plumbing until the 19th and 20th centuries.
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