We have to get the water put into the cisterns AND there is none at the fountain either! Rain doesn't fall, water doesn't come. It's August next week, the worst month for that condition, some years not one drop falls for 30 or 40 days and very little dew also. Fires start up, and water must be stored to fight the fires also. This is a big problem for agriculture if you do not have a well or an enormous cistern, like millions of gallons -- that would be a municipal storage tank. Even so, that would not support agriculture.
This is in the Caribbean. We have had this problem for decades, I am not sure it is more than marginally related to global warming in our area. I am actually a beneficiary of the lack of water insofar as much of my income is from pumping engineering and installation and sales related to cistern backup systems. On the other hand, my poor plant nursery suffers in the drought. Rain is money from heaven if you grow things. I would rather the rain and not have to pump.

About the fountain and the water being there: The fountain is not a spring or the storage for a well, it's just like a big water container with a pump in the bottom somewhere and the water goes up inside the middle or shoots up or whatever, comes down, circulates again, eventually, if no one puts some more water in, it dries out {evaporates} and it doesn't flow anymore. So in that State where the man was arrested, the fountains were running low on water all the time too. On the other hand, if those fountains had automatic fill floats in them, they WOULD have been wasting water {if there was any reaching them}, but not very much, just the evaporation. And on that plaza, the fountains add a lot to the atmosphere.
In the countryside, the water problems are due to rainfall problems, bad water management {not storing rain} or inequitable distribution {water goes to agribusiness and business, and not to homes}. The fountains in a few plazas are definitely not the problem.
I would like to know more about the water management there. That would be the only hope of a long term solution.
And that water in the fountains is often not very good for bathing, don't get any in your mouth!
The oil wars have been going on for some time now, but the water wars will be much worse. Expect them.

Look into rainwater harvesting. I plan to put in at least one downspout collector this year. Lack of water is a bad thing, and it's only getting worse.

That is the way to go Pat, the more we store, the less we need from the government or water authority. I was working on an 8,000 gallon tank this morning. And I consider the tanks small until I get to 30,000 gallons. 30,000 gallons will give 100 gallons a day for 300 days. There are calculations you can do to match your collection area {roof size} and annual rainfall to the amount you should expect to store at maximum. Building a tank larger than that would mean you would fill the rest with public water for emergencies.
But every rain barrel full is 55 gallons more available to other people.

i love where this thread has gone.

what surprised me was not that there was no water, but rather that more people weren´t in the fountains. it makes me think in los conventos when the community would use the water fountains and rivulets to wash clothes y los trastes y la gente.

about five or six years ago el centro lost water due to a problem with cocacola´s use of the main water line into the centre. el municipio and cocacola fought for two weeks over who should fix the problem. in the meantime none of us had water. it drove me absolutely insane, i believe it was the month of june. i was staying at mi tia´s house and she had no rainwater catchment system. so everyday we would have litros y litros de agua falling on our heads but nothing to wash with. it was a particularly rainy season that year due to i think 4 hurricans within one month. tia isabel now has a rainwater system, and she grumbles about la coca when ever she can.

ana,

coca cola is the devil. what were they doing with the water system that it broke?

oh, i don´t know what they did to break the watermain to the fabrica, but as cocacola uses the city water (payed for by tax payers - am i preaching to the converted here??) the municipality refused to fix it. to be honest i'm not sure it wasn't a case of the municipality not wanting to pay, nor accept responsibility, much easier to force cocacola to pay for repairs. as i'm sure many know, nothing is simple in politics, especially in mexico.