Official figures show the magnitude of the problem. In 1975, 32 overexploited aquifers were recognized in the country; By 1981 there were 36. Three decades later, in 2011, the number tripled to 102. In 2022, 111 were counted and, in 2023, the number rose to 114.
The trend reveals that overexploitation has become a structural phenomenon that advances year after year and poses real risks to national water security.
Concentrated pressure in key regions
The Intensive exploitation of groundwater in Mexico began around 1930, driven by the need to supply Mexico City and by agricultural development in arid regions, where surface sources were insufficient due to the increase in demand.
Today, overexploitation is not distributed evenly throughout the territory. According to information from the National Water Commission (Conagua), the most affected aquifers are concentrated in strategic regions such as Lerma-Santiago-Pacific, Northern Central Basins, Río Bravo, the Northwest and the Baja California Peninsula.
These areas coincide with the main agricultural, industrial and urban centers of the country and concentrate around 58% of the total groundwater that is extracted for all uses.
This pressure explains the sustained declines in the water table, the increase in energy costs for pumping and the growing conflicts between users, particularly in the north and center of the country.
(Photo: Cuartoscuro/Archive)
Beyond the extracted volume: the management problem
For Carmen Julia Navarroresearcher at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua and specialist in the study of aquifers in Mexico, overexploitation is not explained solely by the increase in authorized extractions.
“This situation is not only due to more water being extracted, but also to how groundwater has historically been managed in the country,” he said in an interview.
Navarro warned that the very concept of overexploitation, far from functioning as an early warning signal, has become normalized and has lost operational value within water policy.
Aquifers are not dams: a persistent error
Since the 1970s, Mexico began to manage its aquifers based on annual balances that relate precipitation and extraction. For Navarro, this approach represented an important advance at the time, but it has now been surpassed.
“It was a great start because there was nothing, but that evolution fell very short and insufficient,” he explained.
One of the central errors has been treating aquifers as if they were dams. “In a dam you know how much you have stored and how much you can extract; in an aquifer you only assume that so much comes in due to precipitation, but you are not observing it in a tangible way,” he said.
Furthermore, he insisted, the response to recharge the aquifers is not immediate. “There are some that respond annually, but the majority do not. The water that reaches the aquifer today may have taken five or ten years to infiltrate,” he explained.
This lack of synchrony leads to overestimating recharge and continuing to authorize volumes that, in physical terms, no longer exist.
(Photo: GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP)
Research published in 2022 by the engineer Ana Carolina Quiroz agrees with this diagnosis by pointing out that rapid exploitation does not allow the recovery of the groundwater levelleading to a steady decline in aquifer storage.
