Shrinking Lake in Mexico
Threatens Future of Region

JIM CARLTON / Wall Street Journal 3sep03

AJIJIC, Mexico—When Dennis and Ellen Allison retired to this quaint fishing village in 1992, their new three-bedroom home was only a block from the shores of Lake Chapala, the largest fresh-water body in Mexico.

The lake's edge is now about a mile away, having receded steadily during the couple's 11 years here. The newly exposed lake bottom is filling up with trees, brush and rows of corn planted by Mexican peasants who can be seen most days toiling in white straw hats where fish used to swim. "This isn't at all what we expected," says the 69-year-old Mr. Allison, who retired from an engineering job in Minneapolis.

Long considered a national treasure in Mexico, Lake Chapala in the state of Jalisco is shrinking so fast that many people here worry about damage to the environment and the Mexican economy. Since the 1970s, scientists say, the lake has lost about 80% of its water due to heavy development in central Mexico. The lake is fed primarily by the Rio Lerma, which meanders through several hundred miles of arid farmland and supports about 11 million people along its banks. Farmers in recent years have taken to diverting almost all of the river's flow to irrigation, often with outmoded techniques that experts say use up much more water than necessary. At the same time, the bustling manufacturing center of Guadalajara lies downstream and draws on the lake as its principal source of water.

The Mexican government, meanwhile, has done little to arrest the decline, partly because of political infighting, some officials say, but also because of the difficulties of addressing the region's cyclical droughts, which have been exacerbated by rapid population growth.

With the lake now less 16 feet at its deepest, or about half its depth when the decline began in 1977, the shrinkage is affecting the local economy. Many U.S. and Canadian retirees who have settled here report their home values have declined as much as 5% in the past three years. Before that, home values were mostly rising, as some 10,000 U.S. and Canadian expatriates crowded along the shores in recent decades to take advantage of Mexico's lower cost of living and a mild climate that the lake helped create.

The homeowners attribute the falloff in values mainly to the lake's decline, which not only detracts from the scenery but also makes the region hotter. "If the lake goes this will not be a nice place to live," says 68-year-old Joe De Leon, a retiree from Port Arthur, Texas. He adds that his wife is already having to give up her year-round gardening hobby because temperatures have climbed well past 90 degrees on many days when they used to hover more comfortably in the low 80s.

Since spending by the expatriates generates some $200 million annually, a fall in Lake Chapala's popularity could crimp an important revenue source in an otherwise impoverished region.

Meanwhile, economists say that nearby Guadalajara soon may be unable to keep supplying enough water to all the factories that have set up shop here in recent years. Already, the city of nearly four million has imposed water restrictions on certain neighborhoods because demand for water has outstripped supply by almost 40%. The population, which has jumped by nearly a million in the past decade, continues to expand.

"The low level of Chapala is the reason we are short of water," says José Macias, a local state water manager. He adds that a dam is being planned on a nearby river to help give Guadalajara another source of water.

Lake Chapala's plight has aroused international concern. Last year, the United Nations agreed to consider including the lake on its list of ecological places most critically endangered, an act that would make it eligible for international loan assistance as a World Heritage Site. A decision is expected in the coming year. The Living Lakes network, an association of groups coordinated by the Global Nature Fund in Radolfzell, Germany, also is considering adding Lake Chapala to its network of lakes world-wide that are either drying up or threatened by development. A decision is expected soon, which could pave the way for more global funds to help reverse the lake's decline.

Mexican officials first began noticing a problem in Lake Chapala in the early 1980s, when the lake's level plunged after a severe drought. Although the lake historically has risen and fallen with rain cycles, this time it didn't rebound when monsoons returned.

Needing outside technical help, the federal government called in scientists from Baylor University in Texas. Owen Lind, a Baylor biologist and head of a team that specializes in studying shallow lakes like Chapala, began flying down every few weeks to sample the water to see what impact the drop-off was having on its quality. His tests confirmed what some local fishermen suspected because of their declining catches: The lake was becoming a dead zone for marine life. The shallower water was becoming too muddy to produce enough algae for all the fish to eat. Meanwhile, pollution has been pouring in from farms, factories and cities upstream, according to José De Jesus Gonzalez, director of water research at the University of Guadalajara.

On a recent visit, Dr. Lind found little progress in curbing the pollution, despite the fact the Mexican government has taken steps such as constructing several new sewage-treatment plants in the area. Along the Rio Lerma outside the sleepy pueblo of La Piedad, for instance, Dr. Lind and his wife, Laura Davalos-Lind, another Baylor biologist, led a vanload of Baylor scientists to a new plant that workers said hadn't been functional the prior eight days because of technical problems.

"Maybe [later this month] it will be working," said one worker, in knee-high rubber boots, who declined to give his name. He said raw sewage was pouring into the river in the interim.

Although numerous scientific meetings have been convened to review Lake Chapala's decline, the Mexican government has been slow to take actions to stop it. The state of Jalisco where most of Lake Chapala sits managed to persuade five other states upstream to agree in 1992 that more river water should be diverted to the lake. But Mexico's National Water Commission, which sets usage in the river and pledged its cooperation at the time, Jalisco officials say, didn't begin issuing dam releases on the river to feed the lake until 1999. It has done so only a few times since.

Jalisco officials blame the delay on the fact their state is dominated by the National Action Party, while the federal government until recently was controlled by the rival Institutional Revolutionary Party. "This shouldn't be about politics, but it has been," says Armando Morales, a spokesman for Jalisco's state water commission.

Federal water officials deny they agreed to any special set-aside for Lake Chapala, and add they had to wait until rains could refill a dam sufficiently to release more water out of it. They also attribute the lake's decline more to naturally occurring drought than man-made factors. The region has been locked in a 10-year dry spell.

"We hope to be starting a wet cycle now," National Water Commission spokesman Eugenio Garcia said as a monsoonal storm darkened the sky outside his Guadalajara office. He adds the government is overseeing plans to restore the lake to a healthy level by 2010, such as by getting farmers to use more-efficient irrigation practices.

Critics are skeptical, and say unless something happens soon the lake is in danger of becoming uninhabitable for most fish in as little as five years. Already, several species have been essentially wiped out, including a whitefish famed for its delicate taste. "Time is awfully close to running out," says Dr. Lind as he guides his van past newly dug farms along the exposed lake bottom.