Sustainable Management of Groundwater in Mexico Proceedings of a Workshop (2007) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
An Overview of Mexico’s Water Regime and the Role of Groundwater
An Overview of Mexico’s Water Regime and the Role of Groundwater
Pages 13-25
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From page 13... ...
In this legal framework the major responsibilities of the Comisión Nacional del Agua are to: • Enforce the LAN; 1 Ley de Aguas Nacionales, 1992, Diario Oficial de la Federacion, Mexico City, Mexico. Reglamento de la Ley de Aguas Nacionales, 1994, Diario Oficial de la Federacion, Mexico City, Mexico.
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From page 14... ...
The national freshwater withdrawal is approximately 75 billion cubic meters for offstream uses. This volume represents 16% of the national average natural availability (runoff plus aquifer recharge)
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From page 15... ...
Today the CNA is the federal authority responsible for carrying out the hydrological cycle observation, in order to assess water quantity and quality, and its spatial and time distribution throughout Mexico, from the upper air to underground sources, and from the mountains to the mouths of the rivers. The Servicio Meteorologico Nacional (SMN)
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From page 16... ...
The meteorological network also includes 74 automatic ground stations with modern Data Collection Platforms, and 15 fully automated upper air stations with GPS capabilities in operation, in addition to 79 manual analog instrumented ground stations. The climatological network consists of 3200 stations equipped with at least a rain gauge (see Figure 3)
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From page 17... ...
pr od uc t ta s da NMS National Center for NMS National Center for Meteorological Telecommunications Weather Forecast Figure 4 Servicio Meteorologico Nacional and the Global Telecommunications Systems. More recently, CNA has launched an effort to revise the complete operation of the hydrological cycle observation networks, and in what relates to the hydrometric and climatological networks, there is a new task oriented to define National Reference Hydrometric and Climatological Networks, which by definition are constituted by the Level II stations which represent those sites having more than 30 years of data, where the data are not influenced by urban "heat-island" effect, and the data are of good quality.
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From page 18... ...
The Primary Network provides nation-wide, long-term information on the status and trends of the nation's surface, coastal and groundwater resources, which consists of 366 sampling stations, distributed as follows: 205 surface water sampling stations, 117 groundwater sampling stations, and 44 coastal water sampling stations. A fixed-site network is not sufficiently flexible or cost-effective to provide information for regulatory purposes.
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From page 19... ...
Furthermore, Mexico's water supply depends heavily on groundwater resources. Current total groundwater withdrawal is 28 billion cubic meters per year (m3/yr)
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From page 20... ...
It also provides the basis for updating, establishing, or suppressing water regulations like water reserves, water prohibitions and sets of water management rules. Also, this process is in progress in regions of Mexico where the overexploitation is most severe.
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From page 21... ...
The National Water Law promotes social participation through stakeholder councils and committees, to implement programs of water preservation. Water demand management among different users deserves special care.
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From page 22... ...
If reclaimed water is intended for potable uses, the standard defines strict water quality criteria and considers subsurface natural treatment as a complementary protection. If final use is not for human consumption, natural treatment is considered to relax water quality requirements for recharge, lowering costs on previous treatment.
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From page 23... ...
The first step is to publish groundwater availability, update regulations, and apply new and useful methods and techniques for water management featuring user participation. In this context, it is certain that Mexico's groundwater reserve is a strategic and valuable resource, especially in arid and semiarid regions.
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From page 24... ...
Another set of critical issues to be considered in the integral strategy for a sustainable groundwater management include: • an adequate monitoring system for groundwater resources management in quantity and quality; • in-depth quantitative studies supported by mathematical models; • a groundwater database linked to an information management system to process groundwater-related data to aid in assessments and modeling, and in any decision making process; • potential approaches to groundwater resource development and protection supported by specialized studies dealing with environmental costs of groundwater mining or overexploitation, socioeconomic aspects of aquifer-stabilization programs, analyses of demand management for groundwater conservation, and environmental impact of groundwater resource degradation by agricultural, industrial and urban pollutants; • special studies directed to define feasible proposals, with action programs, financial and economical analyses, and implementation instruments; and • Groundwater Management Plans and Aquifer Regulations prepared with a broad and sound social participation assured by the COTAS.
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From page 25... ...
Comisión Nacional del Agua. Ley de Aguas Nacionales, 1992, Diario Oficial de la Federacion, Mexico City, Mexico.
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