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When pipes break, there’s only one company in town that can take on the job: the indomitable local water company, Jumapam. It’s a massive responsibility and Jumapam offices around the city work together to test, maintain and repair the city’s plumbing, as well as to deliver clean water to our homes and businesses.
The big blue building off Calle Emilio Barragan is the Administrative Center, where new contracts are made and customer complaints are heard. Just outside the front door is a kiosk where payments can be easily made almost every day of the year. This is where you go to pay a current or past-due water bill and – snowbirds take note – also to pay in advance on your account so your service doesn’t get interrupted.
A fire destroyed the records and left Jumapam with a giant unknown labyrinth of old, underground water pipes.
Substations dot the streets of Mazatlan, many almost too small to be noticed. These are fenced-in areas where large pipes come out of the ground, go into small blue buildings, and then go back into the ground. These blue buildings act as giant filters, and are strategically placed around the city to clean and circulate the water. These substations help keep Mazatlan’s water flowing from one city district to the next. After it’s been used, the water is routed to treatment facilities.
The treatment facility at Cerritos is the only one that treats sewer water and converts it into re-usable, irrigation-only water. All the water received is converted, but only the cleanest and most nutritious water is released to the golf courses and grassy knolls of the resorts in the surrounding area. Water that cannot be re-used is not re-circulated; instead, it’s sent to what is essentially the last stop for the majority of the city’s water.
The main treatment plant below the lighthouse in Olas Altas is responsible for treating 93% of the city’s sewage; after treatment, only the cleanest water is released into the sea. A pipe 15 meters deep goes 800 meters out into the ocean from the treatment facility, to the two white rocks west of the lighthouse. The last place treated water can travel is to this drainage pipe, where it is slowly dispersed through many points throughout the length of the pipe. This system will change with the addition of a new plant whose construction has yet to begin.
The growth and development in the northern part of Mazatlan has prompted construction of a new treatment facility to relieve the already overloaded facility at the lighthouse. The new plant will take on half the workload of treating sewer water and the treated water will be released, through a drainage pipe, into the estuary that connects with Marina Mazatlan. New plumbing is included with the construction project, the first to be recorded and documented in this city.
Before the 1980s, no records of the city’s pipes were kept, so the plumbing infrastructure is, for the most part, a mystery. Many of Mazatlan’s neighborhoods were built before the city could place any utilities, so pipes were run without consideration for infrastructure. Although the downtown area was documented, a fire destroyed the records and left Jumapam with a giant unknown labyrinth of old, underground water pipes. Thus, many pipes remain hidden until they break. Jumapam does its best to piece together solutions to the problems as they arise, using techniques that are as quick and efficient as possible, but also minimally invasive to the affected areas.
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