The rains of September filled the estuary of San José del Cabo, in northwestern Mexico, with water and opened the bocana, that sandy bar that separates the freshwater lagoon from the salty sea of the Pacific Ocean, letting out all the water lily that overflowed above the surface.
A shallow patch of the water mirror with a fetid odor was discovered. The birds are piling up in that piece of habitat that they have left. You can see a surface layer of mud, islands of mud, the lily reproducing on the banks, to cover it completely again in a month or two, and the reeds surrounding the mirror, consuming its water and leaving it dry.
Water lily, an invasive species, covering the surface of the lagoon known as Estero de San José del Cabo. Source: Daniela Reyes
The rapid spread of water lilies is attributed by the scientific community to discharges from the Wastewater Treatment Plant (PTAR) built by the National Fund for Tourism Promotion (Fonatur), which, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua), are equivalent to 10,234 tanks of 1,100 liters per day in the adjoining soil and directly in the Estero de San José del Cabo.
In an evaluation of the PTAR's performance carried out by the IMTA in 2013, Fonatur reported that it managed to sell only 60% of the volume of treated water in summer and 40% in winter, while the rest was discharged to the estuary.
Satellite image of the Fonatur PTAR with the two download points authorized by Conagua. Source: Comprehensive evaluation of the operational performance of the PTAR in SJC carried out by the IMTA.
Wastewater provides nitrates and phosphates, which are nutrients that make irises grow. When this species dies, because there is no water flow, it provides sediment and other native and invasive species are established on that soil, such as reeds, tulars and salt pine, which absorb large amounts of water, dry the estuary and compact the soil, explained Maricela Martínez, head of the Department of Biological Control of Invasive Plants of the Mexican Institute of Water Technology (IMTA).
“The problem of removing water lilies is easy and fast, but when there is already another one that has been established, which is very aggressive like reeds and tulars, if you don't act immediately you will lose it, you will not be able to recover,” Martínez said.
Urban water management to the detriment of the estuary
With the strategy of regulating the disordered growth of beach destinations, in 1980 Fonatur, a public company responsible for the planning and development of tourism projects in Mexico, promoted the creation of five Integrally Planned Centers (CIP) that were planned tourist cities.
One of them was the Los Cabos CIP, made up of the cities of Cabo San Lucas, San José del Cabo and a tourist corridor that connects them.
The CIP of San José del Cabo was a large scale tourist resort with fourteen beachfront hotel lots, a golf course and three super residential blocks that established itself as the city's hotel zone.
He also built the PTAR to receive CIP wastewater on the lowest floor in the city to avoid pumping it. However, with the boom in tourism, from 2000 to 2010, San José del Cabo had a population growth rate of 8.2%, compared to 1.4% in the country. This meant that the PTAR was surrounded by urban growth and surpassed its original and current capacity, because it also receives municipal water.
Photograph taken towards the treatment plant from the road. Source: Daniela Reyes
The PTAR has a capacity of 250 liters per second, however, it currently receives up to 540 liters per second during peak hours or times of peak demand.
“As a result of growth, PTAR receives more water than can be given adequate treatment. Everything that enters the plant is treated, but we must see how efficient that treatment is or at what times the quality decreases. The problem is that there is water that doesn't even enter the treatment plant. They reach very high peaks in a few minutes, they cannot even enter the plant and are discharged into the estuary. There is no capacity to regulate these extraordinary volumes,” said Tatiana Davis, head of the State Water Commission (CEA).
In the evaluation of the PTAR performance carried out by the IMTA in 2013, it found that the equipment did not have the capacity and this compromised water quality by presenting total suspended solids (TSS) concentrations of 51 milligrams per liter, when the NOM-003-SEMARNAT-1997 establishes that the limit is 30.
“In general terms, we have water that complies with NOM-003-SEMARNAT-1997, however, not in SST. Due to the large accumulation of solids in the system, treated waste water from the PTAR currently does not meet the suspended solids concentration of 20 mg/L for irrigation of green areas and 40 mg/L for discharge to the estuary,” says the IMTA document without a more recent report on the matter.
According to the Fonatur physico-chemical report, treated water does not exceed the limit allowed by NOM 001-SEMARNAT-1996 in terms of DBO5 used to measure the amount of organic pollution in wastewater from 2016 to 2023.
For his part, Ramón Rubio, director general of the Municipal Operating Agency of the Los Cabos Drinking Water, Sewerage and Sanitation System (Oomsapas), said that he does not know the quality and volumes of the water treated by the PTAR.
“I don't know the quality of the treated water from that plant because as an organism we don't get those reports. Nor do I know the volumes they are sending. We made a request to send us some parameter measurements on the chemical concentration of the water to know how efficient the treatment process is,” Rubio said.
Invasive Species Control Action Plan
The reed gives ground to the reservoir and compacts the soil. Source: Daniela Reyes
The estuary is a freshwater coastal oasis and, due to its importance, was declared a State Ecological Reserve in 1994 and was recognized as a RAMSAR site in 2009. However, it is considered one of the most threatened wetlands in northwestern Mexico, due to the growth of tourist and commercial services, says Pronatura Noroeste.
Anthropogenic pressure ended up unbalancing the natural balance and created an environmental problem, said Enrique Troyo, a researcher at the Center for Biological Research of the Northwest (Cibnor).
IMTA personnel visited the estuary in October 2023 and reported that 90% of the 50 hectares of the ANP were infested by native and exotic aquatic species with a high level of invasiveness, such as water lilies.
“The water lily consumes all the oxygen there is and begins to trophize (affect food chains) the aquatic ecosystem because it creates a death of fish, the displacement of other plant species and an alteration in the microbial community,” says Troyo.
The current situation of the estuary puts at risk the lives of the 217 species of waterbirds that use this place for rest, protection and food, of which 97 are migratory and 19 are at risk, such as the sea rooster, explained Graciela Tiburcio, a specialist in wildlife management and conservation.
On the other hand, there is the infestation of tulars and reeds, which are part of the thousand most dangerous species in the world and that, although they are native, are becoming invasive and are drying up the estuary. According to Martínez, this would jeopardize the groundwater supply, so the issue of invasive aquatic plants should be addressed as a matter of national security.
“There is no longer water in the country or in the world, nothing else in Mexico, so the State has not understood that it is something to which resources must be allocated and that immediate actions must be taken to control these plants and we can secure water,” Martínez said.
To address this problem, Martínez proposes to provide advice for the implementation of an Urgent Integrated Species Management Program and to carry out an evaluation of wastewater treatment plants.
“A comprehensive control program for invasive plants needs to be established where biological control agents and manual control are used. Biological control is key because the agents we use produce a reaction in the plant so that it does not produce seeds and ensure that there will not be a new generation of these species,” Martínez said.
Another document that, according to Colin and Troyo, should be updated is the Reserve Management Plan, which was issued in 1998 and updated in 2004, in order to incorporate measures in accordance with the current condition of the ecosystem. There have been proposals for this update from civil society and the academic sector, but they have not succeeded in the Los Cabos council.
Through a decree in 2011, the government of Baja California Sur transferred the estuary to the City of Los Cabos under the category of Area Subject to Ecological Conservation, so the latter is committed to managing the reserve.
“Through a request, we asked that custody be transferred to the municipality of Los Cabos because it is one of the richest in the country, and thinking that resources would be labeled to care for it. Unfortunately, there are so many political and economic interests that we have seen the decline of the San José estuary,” said Pedrín.
Source: Los Cabos City Council through a request for transparency.
From 2011 to 2020 and in 2022, the reserve received no income for its management, while for 2024 it was allocated a budget of one million 200 thousand pesos, 800 thousand pesos less than in 2023.
“The diminishing funds allocated to the ANP and to priority species for conservation, officials in charge without the right profile, among a thousand things, give us a glimpse that there will be no change in the future if we remain the same. This tells us more about a growing deterioration than about successful conservation policies. Making it clear that the environmental aspect is not an issue of importance to the government. Incapacity, omission, ignorance, simulation and corruption are what are consuming Estero Josefino,” Tiburcio said.
Initiatives to recover the estuary
In the memory of Josephine society there is a vigorous estuary that was the public space par excellence. They remember when they boated in canoes or met with their families for swimming and fishing.
“People consider the estuary dead, but we should ask ourselves, what kind of justice allowed my grandparents to live that and not me?” , said Francisco Colín, a member of the Contaminants Anonymous initiative that promotes environmental dialogues in Mexico.
At these meetings, the estuary was a recurring concern, so in August 2023, the SOS Estero initiative emerged, dedicated to manual cleaning to remove water lilies in the Estero State Reserve of San José del Cabo, in northwestern Mexico.
Cleanings have been kept at least once a week with the voluntary participation of citizens and even government institutions and businessmen, but they ceased in July 2024 when they realized that there was no way to beat the rapid spread of the lily and through personal occupations.
“We were demotivated to see that in reality the numbers are not enough to say that with manual cleaning you can cope with the problem. Another factor is that it is also still risky because of the issue that it is sewage,” Colin said.
Comparative photographs before and after a day of manual water lily cleaning in the estuary. Source: SOS Estero
One solution proposed by the City of Los Cabos was the use of a machine known as Wido for the removal of the lily. To obtain access to the tender file, a request for information was made to the City of Los Cabos, but the City Council declared itself incompetent, so a complaint was filed.
“In 2023, it was indicated that a Wido machine would be purchased with resources approved by the Technical Committee on the Right to Environmental Sanitation. A few days after the end of the municipal administration (October 2024), it did not arrive. I wonder if the next mayor will assume the monitoring and costs of all of the above. If it was purchased and didn't arrive, who will follow up? , and if it wasn't bought, what happened to the money?” , Tiburcio questioned.
For this report, an interview was requested with the municipal president of Los Cabos, Christian Agúndez, but until the time of publication there was no response.
Relocation of the PTAR
“The moment the plant is relocated, the problems of the estuary will be solved,” said Pedrín. However, this solution faces a major complication, because with the dissolution of Fonatur that began in 2022, there is uncertainty as to who owns and who should operate the PTAR.
In January 2024, Fonatur stopped operating the treatment plant and it had to pass into the hands of the Government of Baja California Sur and later to Oomsapas Los Cabos, however, because the CIP, including the PTAR, was built on land owned by the National Fund for Ejidal Development Trust (Fifonafe), which claims to be the owner of the plant and granted its operation to the company Opex Latina for one year.
The contract concluded between Fifonafe and the private company was requested through transparency, but Fifonafe declared the information as confidential because “its operation does not involve public money because it is not subsidized and its operation is currently carried out with resources from an individual”. An interview was also requested, but at press time of this report, there was no response.
“The terrain and infrastructure belong to Fifonafe and it has become difficult. What the state government has sought is for Fifonafe to give up the land and the plant legally, but not free of charge, there are some terms that involve paying what it cost to operate it during this time,” said Davis.
The acquisition and operation of the Fonatur plant by the state government and, in turn, the Agency, will ensure adequate treatment of water from the drinking water service, said Rubio of Oomsapas Los Cabos.
He assures that once he receives the plant from the state government, a vessel will be built to cushion the entry of wastewater and will then be relocated.
“We already have a plan of action by the time it is delivered to us. The action plan is to generate a regulatory vessel or tank, which amortizes the volume of the peaks to enter the process over the course of the day and ensure that there are no spills. On the other hand, it is to build a 600 liter per second plant away from the estuary to support the growth of the municipal seat and to remove the current Fonatur plant. The volume of the new PTAR would be added to the 150 liters per second of the La Sonoreña PTAR and we would have 750 liters per second in total,” Rubio said.
According to the head of Oomsapas Los Cabos, this would be possible through an investment from the World Bank, which seeks to finance local sustainability projects, so as not to increase public debt.
For its part, Opex Latina, the concession company based in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, has publicly stated its intention to buy the treatment plant. Causa Natura Media requested an interview with Cesar Guevara, one of the company's partners, but until the time of publication it could not be finalized.
The Oomsapas Los Cabos points out that, in accordance with Article 115 of the Mexican Constitution, the public service of drinking water, drainage, sewerage, treatment and disposal of their wastewater falls only to municipalities, and the participation of a private individual should be through a concession concluded with the agency.
The estuary as a worthy ecological and tourist park
Comprehensive Plan for the Estero of San José del Cabo presented by Patronato Añuiti. Source: Patronato Añuiti
The estuary was known as añuiti, which means a place of palm trees for the pericúes, nomadic indigenous people who lived in the Los Cabos area, so the ecosystem is also a crucial part of history and cultural identity.
With this in mind, in 2010, the Añuití Foreign Board was created, comprised of citizens concerned about the state of the San José del Cabo estuary and interested in its ecological and cultural value being recognized, and who are currently promoting the project for the creation of a park in the estuary.
“Today we decided that they are no longer dealing with palliatives or promises, but with decisive actions. We set out to the task of proposing that a park such as La Mexicana, which is in Mexico City, be built in the estuary. If we achieve that, we will comply with the environment, social justice and the economic component,” said Pedrín.
This project was presented to the community on October 18 in San José del Cabo and Pedrín points out that it will continue to be agreed with the citizens, just as it is intended to be handed over to the state government to be presented to the federation.
“We are inviting deputies, senators, councilors, schools, institutions to learn about the project so that we can promote it, and that there is a commitment on the part of the state to give it a definitive solution,” said Pedrín.
*This is the third report in the #AguaContaminada series, originally published in Causa Natura Media.
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