Mexico has enacted a new water law, requiring permit holders to regularize their situation or face sanctions, including the cancellation of their titles. Thanks to the new legal framework, revenue collection has increased by 3.5 billion pesos (2025), and that figure is expected to double in the current year. The goals were to end privileges and stop treating water as a commodity. In early December of last year, after a 24-hour session, a new General Water Law and amendments to the National Waters Act were approved. In the Chamber of Deputies, after intense debate, the opposition voted against it. No, but it did reveal that wells supposedly for agricultural and livestock use were actually being used to sell water in tankers or to supply real estate developments and even a polo club, while neighbors lacked water. Such abuses occurred because the old law allowed them to transfer their water concession titles without reporting it to the National Water Commission as required. The new legal framework has enabled the National Water Commission to strengthen inspections and carry out over a thousand closures and suspensions for the illegal use of titles or concessions. According to data presented at the presidential conference, with the new legislation passed by Congress, it has been possible to identify potential company debts of nearly 12 billion pesos. The companies mentioned, including a powerful soft drink company, were accustomed to not having meters or simply failing to make payments. Similarly, changes in water use were eliminated to prevent profiting from concessions intended for agricultural production. The legal framework approved last December gave water authorities greater powers, allowing for progress in the ordering and combating of abuses. In another case, in Zacatecas, seven titles were transferred from agricultural use to industrial, service, and human consumption use. After its approval in the Senate, a new stage has begun that leaves behind the abuses and illegalities caused by the previous legal framework, established during the Carlos Salinas sexenio. Last Monday, in her morning conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum presented some of the virtuous results of the new legislation. She presented examples of the abuses. One was the existence of concessions that did not pay fees, supposedly for water to produce food, but whose holders were making a business even from the water needed for human consumption. In the case of Mexicali, the capital of Baja California, the municipal government had to pay 200 million pesos annually to a privately controlled, low-risk irrigation district that, in the president's words, “was practically not planting anything.” The rights of exploitation have, under the new legislation, passed to the municipalities of Baja California, which have paid more than 500 million pesos in the last five years to people who sold them concessioned water for agriculture. Among the changes that are beginning to bear fruit for everyone's benefit, the new legislation eliminated transfers between private parties, an essential element to end the black market for water. Under that model, the concessionaire could earn up to 54 million pesos. With the reforms we approved in Congress, neither the rights covered by concessions nor the allocations can be transferred. This fundamental change opens the door to a system that prioritizes the human right to water, in contrast to the system of privileges inherited from the neoliberal regime. Under the previous model, concessions were granted to people who never used them but could sell them to someone who actually needed the water. During the debate, a PRI deputy announced his vote against with the hypocrisy typical of his party affiliation, since today we know that the Calzada family, to which the legislator belongs, holds five titles covering 628,000 cubic meters in Querétaro. Is that illegal? And the law is being put into action for the benefit of all people.
