The Guadalajara Reporter

Lake recovery stalls despite governor’s safeguard pledge

Lake Chapala’s modest rainy season recovery came to a grinding halt and shifted into reverse almost immediately after Jalisco Governor Aristotoles Sandoval voiced a firm commitment to stand up for its protection.

According to daily status reports issued by the National Water Commission (Conagua) the lake showed a slow but steady rise over the first six weeks of the rainy season, regaining 37 centimeters in elevation, roughly equivalent to 372 billion cubic meters (372 Mm3) in water volume. However the recuperation rate began to stagnate from the beginning of August, hitting a peak gain of 40 centimeters on August 12. Since then the process has faltered, registering a net three centimeter loss over the past week.

As of August  21, Chapala had regressed to a total volume of 3,154 Mm3, just below 40 percent of its full holding capacity, exactly as it stood at the start of the month.

Vague promises

Fielding a question from the Reporter during his visit to Jocotepec on August 8, Governor Sandoval declared that “Lake Chapala is a priority” for his administration. However his remarks were vague in terms of any concrete actions in the works, other than construction of the Purgatorio dam that is designed to tap water from the Rio Verde to supply the Guadalajara metro area, and presumably take pressure off the lake as a principal resource.

He did make an oath to demand respect for standing agreements on the distribution of superficial water in the Lerma-Chapala watershed and to advocate a reduction in allotments for irrigation in upstream agricultural districts to assure a fair share for the lake. 

Yet he seemed clueless when pressed for a specific timeframe for enacting the management plan drawn up by the previous state government in conjunction with Chapala’s designation as a Ramsar Convention protected wetlands site. The truncated plan addresses long-ignored issues of water quality, deforestation and biodiversity, as well as the lake’s recurring problems of irregular water levels. 

Conspiracy?

While government authorities commonly blame Chapala’s plight on scant precipitation and drought, outside observers also point to unfavorable official policies and slack enforcement of water distribution rules as major contributing  factors.

Almost at the same moment that reassuring words were pouring out of the governor’s mouth, they were contradicted by Manuel Villagomez—feisty president of the pro-lake activist group Fundacion Lerma-Chapala and a long-standing government critic.

In a scathing editorial dated August 7, Villagomez essentially accused Jalisco water commission director Felipe Tito Lugo Arias of conspiring with Conagua regional manager Jose Elias Chedid Abraham  to shut off the lake’s natural faucet from the Lerma River.  He slammed the water officials for allowing the river’s flow to be siphoned off from the Mezquite dam, located at the Jalisco-Michoacan boundary line, to flood farming fields near Yurecuaro and Villa Hermosa, to Chapala’s detriment.

“If the waters of the Lerma-Chapala basin were distributed in an impartial manner, the lake would have already recovered 750 Mm3,” Villagomez wrote.

Although a big boost in rainfall over the next two months could help Chapala bounce back to some degree, even in the best scenario there seems to be little chance it will be sufficient to compensate for the 1.45 meter descent registered during the 2012-2013 dry season and similar drops the previous two years.