Overexploitation of the Guatemala City aquifer: extraction vs recharge
- Water for industry
- Industrial water, wells and discharges
- Audited
Yes. The IARNA-URL/TNC balance cited by EMPAGUA (the study 'Bases técnicas…', published in 2013 with 2012 data) estimates average exploitation of 502.3 Mm³/year against available recharge of 139.8 Mm³/year: a deficit of 362.5 Mm³/year, meaning 3.59 times the recharge is extracted. By sub-basin, Las Vacas extracts 40.1 times its recharge and Villalobos 11.3 times. The figures were checked against the text of the EMPAGUA/MGCS PDF on 2026-08-22. No more recent official balance by basin was located; whether the 'Proceso Nacional del Agua' (2025) published new data remains to be confirmed.
The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.
Figures
- Average exploitation of the metropolitan aquifer
- 502.3 Mm³/year
- Available recharge
- 139.8 Mm³/year
- Deficit
- 362.5 Mm³/year
- Extraction over recharge
- 3.59× (Las Vacas 40.1×; Villalobos 11.3×)
Caveat
Sources
Organizations named in the answer
Related records
- Absence of a general water law and national extraction fee
- Right to drill a well and ownership of the water (Civil Code)
- Industrial self-supply and the 2,000 wells of Guatemala's valley
- Procedure to drill an industrial well in the metropolitan area
- Cost and regulation of the municipal well-drilling license
- MARN environmental license costs and categories
This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.