Return of 500 Species of Fauna and Flora to Lake Texcoco Shows the Importance of Not Having Built the NAICM: Sheinbaum

ByAlma E. Muñoz and Alonso Urrutia

This article by Alma E. Muñoz and Alonso Urrutia originally appeared in the July 10, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. Amid the return of 500 species of fauna and flora to Lake Texcoco, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo reaffirmed the importance of not having built the Mexico City International Airport in that area, because it would be flooded. “Texcoco is a regulating reservoir because of the amount of water that falls in the Valley of Mexico,” and had it been built there, all the water we now see would have had to be drained, in addition to the fact that “that area is sinking because of the extraction from the wells around it.”

Just imagine, she said at the mañanera, “rain plus land subsidence, so, more water storage capacity. Technically, engineering can solve anything, but permanently draining the water was going to be extremely expensive and, moreover, it was not clear where they were going to take it.” She stressed that it was not the best location for the city’s airport, with a real estate development that would generate “a lot of urban pressure,” as Vicente Fox and Enrique Peña Nieto intended.