Where does my tap water come from?

Can anyone tell me where the tap water in my casa in Upper Ajijic is originally sourced from?  Is it well water? Purified lake water?

One of the many SIMAPA wells. A couple of years ago there were 17 or so. Today maybe more

Cincy wrote:Can anyone tell me where the tap water in my casa in Upper Ajijic is originally sourced from?  Is it well water? Purified lake water?

I think your best answer will be from SIMAPA in Ajijic ..the rest of us are not qualified to answer

All the tap water in this area is pumped from wells. Which incidently, are getting more shallow every year with the increased population.

As well as the berry farms out on the west end. Not sure if they affect the wells on this side or not but I know Joco muni pozos are dangerously low. Friend just bought a house in El Chante with a nice piece of land around it that he can do nothing with. No water.

Tough times are a'coming.

Wells do not go dry. However, if the pump goes faster than the well can be recharged by aquifers and rain, then they may seem to "dry up". If the water level drops lower than the pump goes, same thing. But they will replenish. A well might be sealed off from surface water by an impermeable layer of rock, making the water a limited source. I haven't heard any reports like that.

That's not totally true CG. The water level can drop below the bottom of the well, when another deeper well is drilled in the area. This is best illustrated by the bottom diagram on this link and is the result of the "cone of depression" on the deeper well taking the water level of a shorter well out of commission. Sometimes, that condition becomes permanent and can only be rectified by drilling deeper.
It would be so much better if people used less than drilling deeper.

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/aquifers-and-groundwater?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

Rare, but in any case, too much for me. Simply trying to inform that suggesting our wells are getting shallower is a broad overstatement. And nobody is going to balance how much well water they use, vs. drilling, unless they have to.

Not as rare as you think. Happened to us at the farmhouse outside Thornbury. Our well was hand dug but only 50 feet deep and 120 years old. Excellent water but it took several hours to fill the washing machine. All around us, new places were built and they were drilling wells 100 feet deep and more but getting crappy water so they drilled even deeper. Totally screws it up for everybody else. We ended up putting in a cistern so we could order a truckload of water if and when necessary.
Living there for nine years was an education in water conservation and how precious a commodity it is.
And I've told my granddaughters that "No, the water doesn't come from the tap".

One big question, which my research was unable to answer, was how many aquifers are there around the lakeside area? One or many?. Where are they?

One aquifer can become depleted while adjacent ones continue supplying water.

SunFan

From what I understand, there are no "aquifers" in this area - just a water table level that varies from location to location. It is a good practice to monitor the static water level and recharge rates in your wells to understand what is actually going on with the water table - I assume SIMAPA must have some sort of program going on to monitor this. On the private wells I manage, I use a sonar sounder to log the static levels and recharge rates - an easy to install instrument from a company in the US called eno Scientific. I am using their Well Watch 660 with 310 interface. Really slick product.

Guad. takes about four inches of water per year out of lake Chapala. Hardly an issue but 40% of the water leaks out before the water make it to Guad. which is an issue for me. However the water gets to Guad the system is in bad shape obviously.