This article by Dulce Olvera originally appeared in the September 25, 2025 edition of Sin Embargo.
Mexico City. Religious associations, banks, real estate agencies, large companies such as Coca-Cola and Kimberly Clark, as well as golf courses, agribusinesses, and individuals such as former governors and even former President Vicente Fox Quesada have abused the over-concessioned water concession titles thanks to the legal framework established by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, which is seeking to be reformed by the government of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo , who has undertaken a review of the 536,000 titles held by Conagua.
Since 2012, groups have promoted a General Water Law initiative to prioritize human use of water over industrial or service use, but it has remained frozen by Congress ever since.
“During the neoliberal period, a model was promoted to grant concessions to our national waters and to treat water as a commodity. This has generated a whole series of impacts, including hoarding, over-concessioning, significant infrastructure deterioration, and perhaps one of the most acute impacts is the unequal distribution of water in our country,” Efraín Morales López, Director General of the National Water Commission (Conagua), explained on Wednesday.
SinEmbargo has revealed how 3,000 large private users monopolize the concessions granted by Conagua, including Kimberly Clark and Banco Azteca, companies owned by millionaires Claudio X. González Laporte and Ricardo Salinas Pliego, as well as FEMSA, Bachoco, Herdez, Lala, the mining companies GoldCorp, and Buenavista de Grupo México, owned by the other millionaire Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco, according to the study by the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM, 2020) The Water Millionaires.
These same data obtained from the Conagua public registry show that the same user can hold multiple concessions in the name of relatives, partners, and/or nominees, as in the case of Coca-Cola and the Tricio family of Grupo Lala.
Even religious associations have accumulated 127 water concessions totaling 7,483,756 cubic meters per year, according to data from Conagua. Some of these were granted for agricultural use, even though the users have retirement homes that provide lodging services. This is shown by an analysis of the Public Registry of Water Rights conducted by Rubén Juárez Zapatero, a member of the Citizen Movement in Defense of La Loma.
Likewise, it has become known how politicians from all parties who have governed their states have benefited from concession titles to exploit the country’s water resources. This is the case, for example, of Guillermo Padrés Elías (Sonora), Diego Sinhué Rodríguez Vallejo (Guanajuato), Miguel Márquez Márquez (Guanajuato), Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (Nuevo León), Luis Armando Reynoso Femat (Aguascalientes), Francisco Ramírez Acuña (Jalisco), Ángel Aguirre Rivero (Guerrero), Rutilio Escandón Cadena (Chiapas), and also former President Vicente Fox Quesada, who was also Governor of Guanajuato.
Dead fish in laguna de Bustillos, a result of drought.
Politicians Squeeze Resources
Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s Coordinator of Deputies, who describes his passion as “working for the country.”
A particular example of how the political class has benefited from water concession titles is that of the Monreal family, the Zacatecas political clan that holds several water concessions for agricultural use in an overexploited aquifer in the state, according to Conagua.
The data in this case show that Father Felipe Monreal Huerta (who died in 2002), as well as the Governor of Zacatecas David Monreal, Senator and former mayor Saúl Monreal, Cándido and Elías Monreal Ávila – all brothers of Morena Deputy Ricardo Monreal Ávila – have obtained concessions for “agricultural use” and “different uses” between 1999 and 2020.
They are not the only ones.
Sonora water concessions of the Padrés family. REPDA
In Sonora, the family of former governor Guillermo Padrés Elías holds, according to the Public Registry of Water Rights (REPDA), six concession titles in the names of Guillermo Padrés Dagnino, son of the former PAN governor, and Miguel Padrés Molina, the former governor’s nephew. Proceso magazine reported in May 2015 that the dam was built on Padrés’ ranch between late 2011 and early 2012, benefiting only Padrés Dagnino and Padrés Molina.
The building was demolished, as was the case with the El Saucito ranch, located in the municipality of Balleza, Chihuahua, owned by former PRI governor César Duarte Jáquez. The property had been seized from him and was recovered during the administration of PAN Governor Maru Campos, with whom he has long been associated.
In Chihuahua, there is a hydromafia made up of former state officials from Conagua (National Water Commission), which has allowed—through lawsuits, false concession titles, and trafficking of certificates—an alleged front man for former PRI governor César Duarte to overexploit the Llano de Gigantes aquifer to produce walnuts. This network has also allowed Mennonite producers and the agro-industrial apple producer La Norteñita to overexploit the Laguna Santa María aquifer, according to the state citizen comptroller’s office.
Jaime Rodríguez Calderón’s two concessions. REPDA.
Also in the north of the country, former governor of Nuevo León, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, owns a communal land in Paredón, Coahuila. For agricultural use, it has 184,000 m3/year of groundwater, which he received from Conagua in November 2006, when he was already a local PRI deputy and years later became mayor of García. He obtained another concession in October 2020, when he was governor, according to the REPDA.
In Aguascalientes, the same data from the Public Registry of Water Rights shows how Luis Armando Reynoso Femat, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), is currently facing charges of tax fraud, embezzlement, and misuse of public office. He and his siblings, Graciela, Felipe, Laura, Olga Irene, Lourdes, and Óscar, have three agricultural use concession titles granted between 1996 and 1998, each of which allows them to obtain more than 200,000 m3 of water annually.
Concessions of the Fermats, associated with PAN. REPDA
In Jalisco, former governor and current PAN Senator Francisco Ramírez Acuña holds an agricultural concession he obtained in 1999, two years before assuming the state governorship and while serving as Mayor of Guadalajara. This permit allows him to use 25,000 m3 of groundwater per year from the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin.
Meanwhile, in Guanajuato, three former PAN governors and their families hold different concession titles. This is the case of the family of former President Vicente Fox Quesada, who enjoys 18 concessions in San Francisco del Rincón, Guanajuato, which allow them to supply water to their various companies, and at a special price due to a government subsidy that must be allocated only to small producers, as SinEmbargo reported in 2023.
Former Governor Miguel Márquez Márquez also holds three concession titles: one granted by the local Conagua Directorate in Guanajuato in January 2000 when he was a Deputy in the state Congress, which allows him to extract 150,000 m3 of groundwater per year; another title in the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin, obtained in March 2001 when he was Mayor of Purísima del Rincón; and the most recent, from January 2013, also in the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin, when he was already Governor of the state, which allows him to extract 90,000 m3 of groundwater per year.
Water concessions held by former President Vicente Fox. REPDA
In the same state, the outgoing Governor, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), obtained an agricultural land use permit during his administration, allowing him to extract 5,000 cubic meters of groundwater annually.
In Guerrero, former Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who left office following the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers, and his wife, Laura del Rocío Herrera, have registered a concession title for agricultural use granted in January 2019 that allows them to extract 51,609 m3 of groundwater per year. Former Governor Rutilio Escandon Cadenas obtained an agricultural concession title in 2001, when he was a Senator, to extract 198,806 m3 of groundwater from the Southern Border Basin.
The Ángel Aguirre Rivero concession. Image: REPDA
Other Chiefs
Added to this is the group of local bosses who control the agricultural irrigation districts, which control 67 percent of the water rights granted. Elena Burns, a member of Agua para Todos (Water for All), explained to this media outlet how the main monopolists and speculators are the real estate industry, banks, irrigation districts, agribusinesses, and individuals who have managed to obtain more than one million cubic meters annually for agricultural use, a use exempt from payment of fees that can later be sold for industrial or other lucrative uses.
Since 1993, Conagua has encouraged the Irrigation District modules to form civil associations. Since then, the governing boards of the ACs have controlled water distribution and their user lists, managing the self-sufficiency fees collected from users. The ACs’ governing boards were grouped into Limited Liability Companies (LLCs).
When federal funds reach these corporations, there is no transparency in their management, and those who control the water end up selling or renting the surplus (to real estate companies, steel companies, the CFE [state electrical utility], among others).
The head of Conagua, Efraín Morales López, explained precisely that because the current Salinas Law (1992) allows a scheme of transmissions between individuals – where they can sell their concession titles from one person to another – a “black market for water” has been created to speculate with the resource.
“Part of the regulation we’re trying to put in place is to put an end to this black market and return this unused water to the nation’s domain, so that the nation can determine the feasibility of granting these titles,” he said.
Concession Forgery
Mauricio Rodríguez Alonso, Deputy Director General of Water Administration, explained on Wednesday how a detailed review of each of Conagua’s 536,000 water titles revealed 58,938 inconsistencies.
“What are the most common incidents we encounter? Titles with no clear validity date. Alleged forgery or duplication of titles. A use other than that for which the title was granted. And location coordinates that are incorrect or don’t correspond to the location where the title was issued,” he said.
The falsification of concession titles has been identified in Chihuahua. According to Elena Burns, former deputy director of Administration at Conagua, the then-Chihuahua Conagua delegate and PRI member Alex Le Baron, in meetings with his legal representatives held in October 2014, issued “certificates of work” to 395 applicants for water supply certificates, even though they did not have wells, as required by presidential decree.
Mennonite communities in Mexico have met strong criticism over poor practices like deforestation and also overexploitation of water concessions by fraud.
These 395 people, of Mennonite origin, then collectively used these “apocryphal records” to sue Conagua to grant concession titles for undetermined volumes, despite the extreme overexploitation of the aquifers.
Water Misuse
The deputy director of Conagua stated that agricultural titles do not pay for water because they produce food; however, they found titles that are identified as agricultural, but are for industrial complexes, spas, a golf club, and there is also the issue of the sale of sunflower seeds.
An example of a different use than the one for which the title was granted takes place in Mexico City. There, in the 1990s, Conagua granted a concession “for agricultural use” to the Bosques Golf Club, a residential site located in the Cuajimalpa municipality.
Conagua’s data records show that the concession title for the Bosques Golf Club (13DFE100012/26AGDA16) was granted by the Valley of Mexico Basin Authority on November 6, 1995, under the National Salinist Water Law, which has allowed land grabbing in areas with low water availability to date.
The concession for this golf club is 365,040 m3/year of surface water, which is for human consumption. Furthermore, it is registered for “agricultural use”—for which no user fees apply—despite being a residential golf club, as described on its website.
The Citizen Comptroller’s Office of the Valley of Mexico identified this anomaly and asserts that it uses potable water instead of treated water to keep golf courses green, a sport associated with the political and business elite.
Residents of Santa Úrsula Coapa have fought against water looting by the Azteca stadium, questioning why the Morena government granted the concession in 2019.
Similarly, since 2019, as shown by the REPDA, the Azteca Stadium (Televisa) has had a concession for the 2026 World Cup, while the neighboring Indigenous town of Santa Úrsula Coapa is experiencing water shortages and has been demanding its cancellation for four years.
Mayor Clara Brigada stated on May 7 that the Televisa well was returned to the Mexico City government to guarantee water for the towns surrounding the Azteca Stadium on the road to the 2026 World Cup. However, in the Conagua registry as of Wednesday, September 24, concession title 811078, granted to the owner of the sports facility on June 27, 2019, for 450,000 m3/year of groundwater, is still visible.
Water Privatization
Finally, regarding the concessions registered for urban public use already used by private individuals, they have been registered in Puebla since 2014, when the Morenovallista government was in power.
The public water system operator transferred its urban public use concessions to the company Concesiones Integrales, which has received complaints about water rationing, supply cuts, and high rates, the Puebla Autonomous Comptroller’s Office notified Conagua.
“We have concessions [197] that are registered for urban public use and are used by private individuals; that is, urban use is granted to municipalities so they can provide water to the population, and we have titles where private individuals are registered. What did we do in that case? We went to check, we did the inspection. And they are, indeed, private individuals, and we have to see what’s going on there. We’ve already conducted the review; in some cases we’re correcting only the title, in other cases we’re investigating what it’s all about,” explained the Deputy Director of Conagua at the morning press conference.
SinEmbargo previously reported that the privatization of this human right is permitted under the Salinas-led National Water Law in cities in Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Coahuila, and Aguascalientes, where users also suffer from arbitrary charges, disconnections due to non-payment, and water rationing. In Querétaro, the local Congress approved a law in 2022 that allows the granting of a service concession to a company.
Dulce Olvera is a reporter on the climate crisis, human rights, and the economy. She hosts Dos con Todo with Monserrat Antúnez. She graduated from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNAM.
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“During the neoliberal period, a model was promoted to grant concessions to our national waters and to treat water as a commodity. This has generated a whole series of impacts, including hoarding, over-concessioning, significant infrastructure deterioration, and perhaps one of the most acute impacts is the unequal distribution of water in our country,” Efraín Morales López, Director General of the National Water Commission (Conagua), explained on Wednesday.