Water Distribution Scenarios in the Mexican Valley

Abstract

Mexican Valley is one of the Mexico’s most critical areas of water supply, the groundwater resources are overexploited at a rate of 100% or more, generating ground sinking up to 0.4 cm/year in some areas. Water shortage in this area is already at an alarmingly critical level. The situation is expected to worsen due to increasing domestic, industrial and agricultural water demands. The limited water resources, the competing users and the combination of several water sources with different qualities require the development of an adequate water distribution system. The objective of this work is to generate a water distribution model as a three-person linear game in which the users are the players, the supplied amounts from five sources are the strategies, and the total water supplies are the payoffs. Since the available water supplies are lower than the total demands from the users, a tradeoff has to be determined. The nonsymmetric Nash bargaining method is used, which requires the solution of a special optimization problem with nonlinear objective function and linear constraints. For all water distribution scenarios there is no water distribution strategy that satisfies the domestic demand with the current system. Therefore investments and further developments are needed in combination with more efficient water usage by the three sectors in the near future to secure the satisfaction of domestic users. A market driven water pricing policy also would give an incentive to the users for more efficient usage of water.