Guadalajara’s water crisis is often described as a shortage. But according to water expert Arturo Gleason, the reality is more complicated — and more troubling.
“In Guadalajara, up to 60 percent of the rainwater is lost,” he said in a recent interview with the Reporter.
That contradiction — heavy rains and flooding on one hand, water shortages on the other — points to a deeper problem: not just how much water the city has, but how it manages it.
After traveling recently through northern and central Mexico, including Sonora and Aguascalientes, Gleason says the warning signs are becoming clearer. Across much of the country, especially from central Mexico northward, conditions are growing hotter and drier, increasing dependence on already overexploited groundwater.
At the same time, aging infrastructure is struggling to keep up.
The pipes and equipment … are operating beyond their useful life,” he said, making it increasingly difficult to deliver both adequate quantity and quality of water.
Guadalajara, he added, is not unique, but it is representative.
A system builtfor another era
Much of the problem, Gleason argues, lies in how Mexico’s water systems were designed.
For decades, water management has relied on large-scale infrastructure — dams, aqueducts and pumping systems — built to bring water from farther away. That approach, he says, still dominates decision-making today.
“This school of the ‘mega-project’ … continues to permeate to this very day,” he said.
But as climate patterns shift and water sources become more stressed, that model is reaching its limits.
In Guadalajara, valuable water is often overlooked. Rainwater is channeled into drains. Underground springs are poorly studied and, in some cases, simply pumped out and discarded.
“We don’t even have an inventory,” Gleason said of these local water sources.
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