Once-Grand Mexican Lake Is Being Drained of Its Life

The lake is so vast it’s known as Mexico’s inland sea. But fisherman Pablo Orozco has a sinking feeling about Lake Chapala.

Leaning over the side of his battered skiff, he dips a 6-foot oar into the murky water. It scrapes the muddy bottom even though the craft is anchored two miles offshore.

“The lake looks big, but there is not much water in it,” the 50-year-old Orozco says with dismay. “This is as shallow as I’ve ever seen it.”

Like a dipstick warning of an engine low on oil, Orozco’s paddle signals big trouble for Lake Chapala. Water volume in Mexico’s largest freshwater lake has plummeted to nearly the lowest level in 50 years, as thirsty farms and cities suck it dry. Fish and wildlife are vanishing. The climate is heating up as the cool waters retreat. And tourism is falling as the region’s most important liquid asset shrivels.

“We took the lake for granted,” said hotelier Alicia McNiff, owner of the Lake Chapala Inn in this tranquil city on the lake’s northern shore. Six years ago, her guests were just steps from the water’s edge. Today, they must slog 20 minutes over a dusty, exposed lake bed to dip their toes into the receding waters.

Conflicting views of how to save the lake, combined with plenty of finger-pointing over who is to blame for its plight, are only hampering the rescue effort. And some experts say time is running out for one of Mexico’s most important water sources.

“The lake is drying up very rapidly.... The evaporation is accelerating exponentially,” said Manuel Guzman, a lakes expert at the University of Guadalajara. “There is a point of no return, and I believe we’re very close to it.”

If the lake dies, human beings will have managed in a little more than a century to wipe out an ecosystem that has sustained life here for millenniums.

Stretching 50 miles across portions of Jalisco and Michoacan states, Lake Chapala is an oasis in Mexico’s parched west-central highlands. Its waters have produced species of whitefish and charal found nowhere else on Earth. The lake is also a critical habitat for migrating waterfowl, including spectacular flocks of white pelicans.

“Snowbirds” also have been lured by the vicinity’s temperate climate. Thousands of American retirees have bought property in the Chapala area, which the earliest indigenous settlers nicknamed “the wet and soaked place.” Just as the Owens Valley fell victim to faucets in Los Angeles, though, Lake Chapala has become a water cooler for thirsty cities.

The lake is the principal source of drinking water for Guadalajara, 30 miles to the north, which last year helped itself to 153 million cubic meters of the stuff. At the same time, water that used to flow into Lake Chapala from the Lerma River is being siphoned off upstream to irrigate crops and provide drinking water for Mexico City, 340 miles to the east.

States that share the watershed feeding Lake Chapala have agreed in principle to send a certain amount of water downstream annually to sustain the lake. But in practice, the agreements have no teeth, and those regions have their own water problems to worry about.

The result is that the lake today contains less than 20% of the water it held at its peak. Never a deep body of water to begin with, Lake Chapala is starting to resemble a puddle. Water levels that once topped out at 36 feet are hovering around 4.5 feet on average.

Fish stocks have plunged as the waters have grown shallower and more polluted. The prized whitefish once served in every lakeside restaurant is virtually extinct. The only way most people can spot a Lake Chapala fisherman is via the likeness engraved on the back of Mexico’s 50-peso bill.

Orozco is one of the remaining stalwarts. On a good day, he can haul in about $30 worth of carp, catfish and tilapia in his nets. But he says catches are dwindling while his expenses are rising. Many of his friends have called it quits. Abandoned boats littering a weed-choked canal show how far the ripple effects of one shallow lake can travel.

“A lot of those guys left to find work in the United States,” Orozco said.

Tourism, the key driver of the local economy, is sputtering as well. Last year, just more than 760,000 people visited the Chapala area. That was down 11% from the peak in 2000 and marked the second straight year of decline. Although some of that drop can be attributed to terrorism fears and the global economic slowdown, officials acknowledge that the lake’s woes have made the area less appealing.

Visitors walking along the seawall promenade today are treated to a view of sand and scrub instead of glittering shoreline. The lighthouse at the end of the town pier blinks forlornly at water that has retreated a mile away. Vehicles have cut dozens of scarring paths across the arid lake bed. Shifting soil is weakening historic buildings downtown, including the onetime mayor’s office, which is covered in scaffolding to prevent collapse.

One of the latest suggestions for refilling Lake Chapala comes from the water commission of Jalisco state, which contains the bulk of the lake. Unable to rely on Jalisco’s neighbors to send their fair share of water downstream, the agency is focusing on the demand side of the equation instead. Since Guadalajara is the principal drain on the lake, the water commission is proposing to lighten the load by damming some rivers closer to the city to create an alternative source of drinking water.

Environmental groups, however, are deeply suspicious of that plan, in part because of the unintended consequences that have accompanied man-made alterations to the watershed over the years.

The biggest came in the early 1900s, when the Mexican government allowed 30% of the lake’s surface to be drained and converted into farmland. That move set off a chain reaction of construction to control the basin to provide irrigation and flood control. Today, the surrounding watershed is peppered with 11 major dams and more than 1,500 smaller water storage areas. Meanwhile, the amount of farmland under irrigation has exploded, from 161,000 acres in the mid-1920s to more than 2 million acres.

And the land rush continues. With Lake Chapala receding by hundreds of feet a year, farmers and others have moved in to expand their holdings. The federal government has granted permission to some of the pioneers, who pay a rental fee. Others are squatters. But the colonization of the former lake bed is in full, sometime surreal, effect.

On the shore near Chapala, corn, beans and fences have sprouted on soil that was under water a few years ago. Cattle graze incongruously near stranded boats. One cheeky entrepreneur has set up a crude golf course, where duffers can hack away on the parched lake bed without worrying about replacing their divots.

These settlers are one more factor complicating efforts to restore the lake to health. Coordination between a hodge-podge of state and federal players has proved difficult, and although environmental groups have conducted valuable research and raised public awareness about the lake’s dismal condition, they have yet to persuade legislators that there’s a workable solution.

So far, the struggle to save Lake Chapala has been peaceful. But even veteran organizers say tensions are rising as the lake sinks. Still, even among the lake’s most ardent devotees, there is a sense that much of what has been lost can never be recovered.

In the cool rotunda of Chapala’s City Hall, surrounded by vintage photos of bulging canals and overflowing seawalls, historian Armando Hermosillo recounts Lake Chapala’s former riches.

Asked what lies ahead, Hermosillo pauses, pulls on a cigarette, then steps out of the past long enough to divine the future of his city.

“The lake is a god. It’s the father and the mother that inspires us,” he says. “If the lake dies, everything will die. This place will be a hell.”