Up in the air
When Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the Spanish conquistador, first laid eyes on Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital now buried under Mexico City, he marvelled at how such a great city could be built in the waters of Lake Texcoco. Almost 500 years later, Mexico City’s airport engineers might ask themselves the same question.
In 2014, the Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, announced that Mexico City was to get a new airport. The existing facility, Benito Juárez, was first laid out in 1950 when the capital’s population was 3m – it is now over 20m – and is crippled by a lack of growing space.
The government appointed airport mastermind, Norman Foster, famous for Heathrow’s Terminal 5, as architect-in-chief. He put forward a futuristic design, one of the largest and most advanced airports in the world. This new airport will double passenger numbers, meaning $19.6bn in extra tourism revenue, and strengthen Mexico’s status as Latin America’s cargo hub, with growth of 1.2 million tonnes per annum of cargo by 2030.
Two years after construction should have commenced, however, all that has been achieved is a ‘to-scale painting’ of the runways, in situ. “The airport will never be built in that location” says Ricardo Serrano, from the Mexican Secretariat of Economy. The problem: Lake Texcoco.
Since the Spanish conquest, engineers have systematically drained Lake Texcoco to reduce the risk of periodic flooding in Mexico City. But a giant aquifer remains below the capital, which means much of the metropolitan area is sinking. The new airport is planned to be built on the most recently exposed area of lakebed which, unfortunately, is also the most unstable.
It may be an ideal location, close to the city, flat and with plenty of space, but to build foundations and infrastructure, including runways, a metro link and terminal buildings, will “cost billions more than budgeted and require expensive building technology” argues Jorge Ramirez, a local civil engineer. Mr Foster has said the airport will “float like a boat”, but according to Mr Ramirez, permeable fabrics will still need to be added to stabilise the soil before construction can even begin.
Mr Peña Nieto’s administration initially said the airport project would cost $9.1bn, which then rose to $11.3bn. Last year, Mexico sold $2bn in bonds to partially finance construction. The US engineering firm, Parsons, believes $50.3bn is a conservative figure.
So will the airport be built? It is meant to be a defining symbol of Mr Peña Nieto’s presidency, which has focused on modernising infrastructure. But the President knows that it is no longer his problem, as he is constitutionally barred from running in next year’s presidential elections. Current frontrunner, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has already promised to scrap the project. Like Heathrow, it will involve many years of political wrangling. It would appear that Moctezuma will have his revenge for the destruction of his beautiful Tenochtitlan.
[NB. source names changed due to request for anonymity]
