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SUMMARY
Which Mexico City neighborhoods have water problems now? The clearest current trouble spots are Pedregal de Santo Domingo, Jardines del Pedregal, parts of Milpa Alta, higher areas of Tlalpan, and several long-struggling neighborhoods in Iztapalapa.
The city’s water problem is no longer well described by a single drought story. Cutzamala has recovered strongly, yet some neighborhoods still go days or weeks without reliable network water because the weak point is often much closer to the tap.
Pedregal de Santo Domingo is the hardest current case to dismiss. Residents on one street recently reported at least a month without tap water, on top of a longer history of intermittent supply.
Tlalpan remains the strongest borough-level warning for a housing decision. Its concentration of tandeo neighborhoods is much larger than anywhere else in the city, and high elevation makes weak pressure and pump failures harder to absorb.
Iztapalapa’s problem is broader rather than neatly concentrated in one corridor. Chronic intermittent service, major pipe failures, occasional quality complaints and dependence on pipas can overlap in the same parts of the borough.
Money helps residents cope, but it does not necessarily fix the municipal connection. Jardines del Pedregal is a good example: expensive homes can still depend heavily on private tanker deliveries when the network does not deliver enough.
Milpa Alta shows the opposite problem. A single well failure can suddenly affect several communities at once, which makes local infrastructure resilience more important there than any citywide reservoir number.
The published tandeo pattern is highly uneven. Tlalpan and Iztapalapa together account for more than half of the historically listed neighborhoods, while Magdalena Contreras, Tláhuac, Gustavo A. Madero and Xochimilco form a second belt of structural risk.
Leak data adds another layer. Tens of thousands of citizen reports in only a few months suggest that aging pipes, pressure losses and slow repairs are now a major part of the story even in boroughs that are not famous for rationing.
Building-level resilience can completely change the lived experience. Two apartment buildings on the same street may receive the same municipal water window, yet the one with a large cistern, good pumps and routine pipa deliveries can appear to have no problem at all.
For anyone choosing where to live, the useful question is no longer simply whether Mexico City has enough water. It is whether water reliably reaches this neighborhood, this street and this building, and what happens when it does not.
Which Mexico City neighborhoods have water problems right now?
Several Mexico City neighborhoods have serious water problems right now, with the clearest current cases in Pedregal de Santo Domingo, Jardines del Pedregal and five communities in Milpa Alta.
Pedregal de Santo Domingo in Coyoacán is the hardest current case to dismiss as a routine interruption. N+ recently interviewed residents on Tercera Cerrada de Zacatianguis who said their taps had been completely dry for at least a month. Residents explained that they previously received some water at night, so the latest outage is a clear deterioration from an already unreliable service.
Jardines del Pedregal in Álvaro Obregón is facing a different problem. The Mexico City Congress has just asked water authorities to guarantee continuous supply after repeated complaints from residents. According to the congressional proposal, some households have been spending as much as MXN10,500 a month on tanker water. Las Águilas and other parts of Álvaro Obregón were included in the same request.
Milpa Alta has the clearest temporary disruption today. A mechanical failure at the San Juan Tepenahuac well has reduced pressure in San Juan Tepenahuac, San Francisco Tecoxpa, San Jerónimo Miacatlán, Santa Ana Tlacotenco and San Agustín Ohtenco. SEGIAGUA expects the repair work to continue for several days, with free pipas available in the meantime.
Portales in Benito Juárez also deserves a mention because a broken 12-inch pipe forced authorities to close valves while carrying out repairs. The Portales case looks more like a local infrastructure failure than the deeper supply problems seen in the south and east of the city.
| Neighborhood or area | Borough | What is happening now? | How serious does it look? | Main problem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pedregal de Santo Domingo | Coyoacán | Residents report at least a month without tap water | Very serious | Persistent shortage |
| Jardines del Pedregal | Álvaro Obregón | Repeated shortages and heavy reliance on pipas | Serious | Persistent distribution problem |
| Las Águilas | Álvaro Obregón | Included in the latest request for improved supply | Elevated | Distribution problem |
| San Juan Tepenahuac | Milpa Alta | Low pressure after well failure | Serious for now | Well failure |
| San Francisco Tecoxpa | Milpa Alta | Low pressure after well failure | Serious for now | Well failure |
| San Jerónimo Miacatlán | Milpa Alta | Low pressure after well failure | Serious for now | Well failure |
| Santa Ana Tlacotenco | Milpa Alta | Low pressure after well failure | Serious for now | Well failure |
| San Agustín Ohtenco | Milpa Alta | Low pressure after well failure | Serious for now | Well failure |
| Portales | Benito Juárez | Supply disrupted during pipe repairs | Probably temporary | Pipe failure |
Is Pedregal de Santo Domingo one of Mexico City's worst water-problem neighborhoods now?
Yes. Pedregal de Santo Domingo currently stands out as one of Mexico City's most worrying neighborhood-level water problems.
The latest resident reports are unusually severe. N+ found households on Tercera Cerrada de Zacatianguis that had gone at least a month without receiving a drop through the network. Residents were buying 20-liter containers for basic daily use and said even the limited nighttime supply they once received had disappeared.
There is also a longer history behind the current outage. Pedregal de Santo Domingo appears on the city's tandeo records alongside nearby Coyoacán neighborhoods such as Ajusco, Pedregal de Santa Úrsula, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines and Nueva Díaz Ordaz.
That combination is much more convincing than one isolated complaint. Pedregal de Santo Domingo already belonged to an intermittently supplied zone, and residents are now describing something worse. Anyone considering an apartment there should check the building's cistern, pumping system and recent pipa use before assuming the municipal connection is reliable.
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Which Milpa Alta neighborhoods have water problems today?
San Juan Tepenahuac, San Francisco Tecoxpa, San Jerónimo Miacatlán, Santa Ana Tlacotenco and San Agustín Ohtenco currently have reduced water pressure because the San Juan Tepenahuac well is out of service.
SEGIAGUA reported a mechanical problem involving the well and its column equipment. Repairs are expected to take several days, which means this is a meaningful short-term interruption rather than a few hours of maintenance.
Milpa Alta's water network depends heavily on wells, pumping stations and storage tanks serving individual pueblos. That makes failures unusually local. One damaged well can quickly affect several communities even when water availability across the rest of Mexico City looks normal.
The current Milpa Alta outage tells us very little about Cutzamala and quite a lot about local resilience. Five communities are losing pressure because one important piece of infrastructure stopped working.
Is Jardines del Pedregal really struggling with water?
Yes. Jardines del Pedregal currently has a serious enough water problem for the Mexico City Congress to demand a more reliable supply.
The latest congressional intervention describes the shortages as systematic. Residents have reportedly spent as much as MXN10,500 a month buying tanker water while continuing to pay normal water charges.
Jardines del Pedregal is supplied partly through the Padierna and Picacho storage tanks, which also serve surrounding parts of Álvaro Obregón and Magdalena Contreras. Congress specifically asked the water authority to keep enough flow in those tanks to provide daily, uninterrupted service and to find alternatives that reduce the neighborhood's dependence on them.
The case is useful because Jardines del Pedregal is one of the city's most expensive residential areas. Money can buy a bigger cistern or more pipas, but it cannot guarantee that municipal water will reach the property consistently.
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Where are Mexico City's chronic water problems concentrated?
Mexico City's chronic water problems are still concentrated most heavily in Tlalpan and Iztapalapa, followed by Magdalena Contreras, Tláhuac, Gustavo A. Madero and Xochimilco.
The city's current fiscal rules still formally recognize neighborhoods receiving water by tandeo. Intermittent supply remains an official feature of the system these days, not simply a memory of the severe Cutzamala drought.
The most useful citywide comparison comes from the published neighborhood lists. Tlalpan has 94 tandeo neighborhoods and Iztapalapa 58. Together they account for 152 of the roughly 284 neighborhoods historically covered by the city's rationing framework, or more than half of the total.
Magdalena Contreras follows with 30, Gustavo A. Madero with 24, while Tláhuac, Xochimilco, Cuajimalpa, Álvaro Obregón, Coyoacán and Milpa Alta make up most of the rest.
The pattern is too concentrated to treat Mexico City's water problem as evenly spread across the capital. The south, southeast and east carry much more structural risk.
| Borough | Neighborhoods historically listed for tandeo | Share of 284 | What the number tells us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tlalpan | 94 | 33.1% | Mexico City's largest concentration |
| Iztapalapa | 58 | 20.4% | Very broad eastern-city exposure |
| Magdalena Contreras | 30 | 10.6% | Strong pressure and elevation problems |
| Tláhuac | 26 | 9.2% | Persistent southeast vulnerability |
| Gustavo A. Madero | 24 | 8.5% | Important northern cluster |
| Xochimilco | 16 | 5.6% | Multiple intermittently supplied communities |
| Cuajimalpa | 14 | 4.9% | High-elevation vulnerability |
| Álvaro Obregón | 13 | 4.6% | Highly uneven service by neighborhood |
| Coyoacán | 5 | 1.8% | Small official count, but some severe cases |
| Milpa Alta | 4 | 1.4% | Fewer listed zones, with fragile local infrastructure |
Is Tlalpan still the riskiest part of Mexico City for water?
Yes. Tlalpan remains the borough where water reliability should influence a housing decision most often.
Its 94 tandeo neighborhoods represent roughly one-third of the city's published total. The affected areas also form a clear geographic pattern rather than a random collection of streets.
The higher southern neighborhoods appear repeatedly: Pedregal de San Nicolás, Lomas de Padierna, San Andrés Totoltepec, San Miguel Xicalco, San Pedro Mártir, San Miguel Ajusco, Santo Tomás Ajusco, Parres and Topilejo.
San Miguel Ajusco gives a sense of how severe conditions can become. Residents interviewed earlier this year described very long periods without network water and recurring dependence on alternative supply.
Tlalpan's altitude makes the problem harder. Water has to be pushed toward communities sitting much higher than central Mexico City, and some of those neighborhoods lie near the end of the distribution system. Pressure losses hit them harder when wells, pumps or upstream supplies underperform.
Recent infrastructure failures reinforce the pattern. Between January and May, SUAC recorded 3,711 reports of potable-water leaks in Tlalpan, the third-highest borough total in the city. A large rupture in Héroes de Padierna later interrupted service for more than two weeks in Vistas del Pedregal, Dos de Octubre, Bosques del Pedregal and Lomas de Cuilotepec.
| Tlalpan area | Current risk level | Why we would pay attention |
|---|---|---|
| San Miguel Ajusco | Very high | Long history of severe intermittent supply |
| Santo Tomás Ajusco | Very high | High elevation and tandeo |
| Topilejo | High | High elevation and intermittent service |
| San Andrés Totoltepec | High | Formal rationing and difficult network position |
| Pedregal de San Nicolás | High | Repeated presence on tandeo lists |
| Lomas de Padierna | High | Pressure and storage constraints |
| Héroes de Padierna | High | Tandeo plus major recent pipe failures |
| Central/lower Tlalpan | Lower | Generally better positioned within the network |
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How bad is Iztapalapa's water problem now?
Iztapalapa still has one of Mexico City's deepest water problems, and recent data show that the borough remains far from universal 24-hour service.
One of the clearest figures came earlier this year when N+ reported that only 78 of Iztapalapa's 293 colonias had water 24 hours a day. Even allowing for differences in how neighborhoods and service zones are counted, the scale is striking: most of the borough did not have continuous supply.
San Sebastián Tecoloxtitla is among the most severe examples. Residents interviewed this year said the area had struggled with unreliable water for roughly two decades, with households continuing to buy pipas despite paying water bills.
Elsewhere in Iztapalapa, Escuadrón 201 residents have complained about turbid water, sediment and odor. Santa Cruz Meyehualco, Santa María Aztahuacán, Quetzalcóatl, Francisco Villa, La Era and Jacarandas all experienced low pressure after a 48-inch pipe failure earlier this year.
Another large repair later affected Santa Catarina, San Sebastián, Santa Martha and Santa María Aztahuacán. Those repeated interruptions show how easily one failure in a major line or pumping system can spread across several communities.
Iztapalapa's problem has several layers at once: chronic intermittent service, occasional quality complaints and a distribution network vulnerable to large failures.
Which Iztapalapa neighborhoods should residents worry about most?
San Sebastián Tecoloxtitla, Santa María Aztahuacán, Santa Cruz Meyehualco and the Santa Catarina-Santa Martha corridor currently deserve the most attention in Iztapalapa.
San Sebastián Tecoloxtitla combines perhaps the strongest warning signs. Residents have described decades of unreliable service, and the neighborhood appeared again this year in protests over long periods without network water.
Santa María Aztahuacán has been affected repeatedly by major infrastructure work. A large rupture at Santa Cruz Meyehualco lowered pressure there, and a separate repair later affected the same area again together with Santa Martha and San Sebastián.
The older tandeo lists widen the concern. Jardines de San Lorenzo Tezonco, El Manto, Santa Martha Acatitla, Santa María Aztahuacán, San Lucas, San José, San Antonio, Francisco Villa, Jacarandas and La Era all appear among intermittently supplied areas.
Still, not every building in these neighborhoods will feel equally problematic. A condominium with a large cistern may hide several days of poor municipal supply from residents. A small building a few streets away can run dry quickly.
That building-level difference is large enough that an Iztapalapa address should trigger more questions, rather than automatically kill a property decision.
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Are Magdalena Contreras, Tláhuac and Xochimilco also water-risk areas?
Yes. Magdalena Contreras, Tláhuac and Xochimilco form a second major belt of water risk south and southeast of central Mexico City.
Magdalena Contreras has around 30 neighborhoods on the published tandeo lists, placing it third behind Tlalpan and Iztapalapa. Its steep terrain creates many of the same pressure problems seen across the nearby Padierna and Ajusco areas.
Tláhuac has roughly two dozen intermittently supplied neighborhoods. A recent failure in a 48-inch line showed how fragile that system can be: Santiago Zapotitlán, La Conchita Zapotitlán, Zacatenco and Las Puertas lost service, while Guadalupe Tlaltenco experienced reduced pressure.
Xochimilco also contains a meaningful cluster of rationed areas, including parts of Nativitas and several traditional barrios and pueblos.
These boroughs receive less attention than Iztapalapa because their populations are smaller. For an individual household, though, a three-day outage in Tláhuac is just as real as a three-day outage anywhere else.
| Area | Chronic problem | Recent evidence | Overall risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magdalena Contreras | Around 30 tandeo neighborhoods | Pressure and elevation constraints | High |
| Tláhuac | Around two dozen tandeo zones | Large transmission-line failures | High |
| Xochimilco | Multiple tandeo communities | Recurring intermittent service | High |
| Cuajimalpa | High-elevation tandeo areas | Difficult distribution geography | Elevated |
| Álvaro Obregón | Very uneven by neighborhood | Jardines del Pedregal shortages | Elevated to high |
Does Gustavo A. Madero have a serious water problem too?
Yes. Gustavo A. Madero currently has one of Mexico City's heaviest leak burdens, on top of a sizeable group of neighborhoods already receiving intermittent water.
Between January and May, SUAC recorded 4,910 water-leak requests in Gustavo A. Madero. That was the highest borough total in Mexico City. Álvaro Obregón followed with 3,789 and Tlalpan with 3,711.
A leak report does not automatically mean a household lost service. The aggregate is still useful because thousands of failures create pressure losses, waste treated water and force repeated repairs.
Gustavo A. Madero also has around two dozen neighborhoods on the published tandeo lists, particularly around Cuautepec, Ticomán and parts of San Juan de Aragón.
The combination makes the borough more concerning than its reputation sometimes suggests. Its problem is less famous than Iztapalapa's, but the network is clearly under heavy strain.
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Have Mexico City's heavy rains fixed the water shortage?
No. Mexico City's rainy season has greatly improved the amount of water available, while neighborhood shortages continue because distribution remains the bigger problem in many areas.
The contrast is unusually easy to see now. Mexico City has recently experienced intense storms and serious flooding while residents of Pedregal de Santo Domingo reported a month without tap water and Jardines del Pedregal residents complained about repeated shortages.
The explanation is fairly simple. Most rain landing on city streets enters the drainage system. It does not suddenly become treated water inside a neighborhood's pipes. Reservoir recharge, aquifer recharge, treatment, storage, pumping and distribution all happen through different systems.
The contrast appears at street level too. Areas of Tlalpan have recently had water dozens of centimeters deep after storms, yet the same borough contains more tandeo neighborhoods than anywhere else in Mexico City.
Today's rain is genuinely good news for regional water security. It has much less power to fix a broken pump in Milpa Alta, weak pressure in Ajusco or a damaged transmission line in Iztapalapa.
Is the Cutzamala water crisis still Mexico City's main problem?
No. Cutzamala has recovered so strongly that local infrastructure now explains much more of the neighborhood water problem than reservoir scarcity does.
The turnaround has been dramatic. Conagua reported the Cutzamala system above 97% of storage capacity after rainfall replenished Valle de Bravo, Villa Victoria and El Bosque. The system held roughly 762 million cubic meters at that point, around 243 million more than one year earlier.
That recovery removed one of the most frightening risks facing Mexico City during the earlier drought. Cutzamala was once approaching historically low levels, raising the possibility of increasingly broad reductions in supply.
Yet Pedregal de Santo Domingo can still go a month without water. Jardines del Pedregal can still rely heavily on pipas. A failed well can still disrupt five Milpa Alta communities. Large pipes can still rupture in Iztapalapa, Tlalpan or Benito Juárez.
The picture is cleaner now: Mexico City has more raw water available than during the worst drought period, while its ability to deliver that water reliably remains highly uneven.
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Are Mexico City's pipes becoming a bigger part of the water problem?
Yes. The sheer number of leak reports shows that Mexico City's aging distribution network has become impossible to treat as a secondary issue.
SUAC accumulated 39,142 requests related to potable-water leaks during the first five months of this year. That works out to roughly 260 reports per day, or around one every five and a half minutes.
More than 10,000 requests were still open when those figures were compiled. The average response time was around 18 days and reached roughly 24 days for cases handled directly by the city government.
The borough pattern is also revealing. Gustavo A. Madero recorded 4,910 reports, Álvaro Obregón 3,789 and Tlalpan 3,711, while Coyoacán and Iztapalapa each exceeded 3,500.
These numbers should not be read as 39,142 separate catastrophic pipe bursts. SUAC records citizen requests, and several reports can concern the same incident. Even with that caveat, the order of magnitude is huge.
The latest Portales rupture gives a small example of what the aggregate looks like on the ground. A 12-inch pipe failed near Saratoga and Eje 8, valves had to be closed and residents faced interrupted supply during repairs. Similar failures happen across the city every day.
| Borough | Leak requests, Jan-May | What stands out |
|---|---|---|
| Gustavo A. Madero | 4,910 | Highest reported total |
| Álvaro Obregón | 3,789 | Very high leak burden plus local shortages |
| Tlalpan | 3,711 | Heavy leakage in the city's biggest tandeo borough |
| Coyoacán | More than 3,500 | High leak volume despite fewer formal tandeo zones |
| Iztapalapa | More than 3,500 | Adds infrastructure failures to chronic scarcity |
| Mexico City total | 39,142 | Around 260 requests per day |
Can expensive central Mexico City neighborhoods still have water problems?
Yes. Central and expensive neighborhoods generally face less chronic rationing, but recent cases show that price alone offers no protection from pipe failures, bad pressure or local supply problems.
Benito Juárez illustrates the difference well. Portales recently lost normal service while crews repaired a 12-inch pipe. That looks temporary, and Benito Juárez is far less exposed to chronic tandeo than Tlalpan or Iztapalapa.
The borough also carries the memory of the major water-quality problem that affected parts of Del Valle, Nápoles, Mixcoac, Nonoalco, Nochebuena and Ciudad de los Deportes. The Alfonso XIII well linked to that episode was shut down, and there is no strong evidence today that those neighborhoods are experiencing the same contamination again.
Jardines del Pedregal gives the stronger current warning. One of Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods is dealing with enough supply trouble that residents have reportedly spent up to MXN10,500 per month on pipas.
Affluent buildings often cope better because they have large cisterns, pumps and enough money to buy tanker water. That can make municipal shortages almost invisible to someone viewing an apartment for half an hour.
A building where residents say they “never lose water” can still have an unreliable municipal connection. The cistern may simply be doing its job very well.
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Why can two buildings on the same Mexico City street have completely different water problems?
Two Mexico City buildings can sit a few meters apart and still have very different water reliability because cistern size, pumps, elevation and water use inside the building matter enormously.
Imagine two 30-unit apartment buildings receiving municipal water during the same limited delivery window. One has a large underground cistern and well-maintained pumps. The other stores only a fraction as much water.
Residents in the first building may never notice the tandeo. The second building can run dry before the next delivery arrives.
Higher floors add another variable. Weak network pressure may be enough to fill a ground-level cistern but insufficient to serve upper floors directly. Buildings with booster pumps solve that problem; buildings with failing pumps suddenly appear to have a neighborhood water shortage.
Pipas widen the gap again. A condominium that routinely spends money on tanker deliveries can compensate for a bad municipal connection for years.
This is why asking a landlord “Does the neighborhood have water?” produces a surprisingly weak answer. Better questions are how often municipal water enters this exact building, how much it can store and how often residents have had to buy additional water.
Which Mexico City neighborhoods should we worry about most now?
The clearest current answer is Pedregal de Santo Domingo for an acute persistent shortage, parts of Milpa Alta for the active well failure, Jardines del Pedregal for repeated supply problems, and the higher areas of Tlalpan and large parts of Iztapalapa for structural risk.
Pedregal de Santo Domingo belongs near the top because residents have just reported at least a month without network water. The current Milpa Alta problem covers San Juan Tepenahuac, San Francisco Tecoxpa, San Jerónimo Miacatlán, Santa Ana Tlacotenco and San Agustín Ohtenco, although those communities should improve once the damaged well returns to service.
For longer-term housing risk, Tlalpan remains the clearest red flag. San Miguel Ajusco, Santo Tomás Ajusco, Topilejo, San Andrés Totoltepec, Pedregal de San Nicolás, Héroes de Padierna and Lomas de Padierna sit inside the city's largest concentration of intermittently supplied neighborhoods.
Iztapalapa comes next. San Sebastián Tecoloxtitla, Santa María Aztahuacán, Santa Cruz Meyehualco, Santa Martha, the Santa Catarina area, Jardines de San Lorenzo Tezonco and several central barrios combine a history of tandeo with recent shortages or infrastructure failures.
Magdalena Contreras, Tláhuac, Xochimilco, parts of Gustavo A. Madero, Cuajimalpa and Álvaro Obregón form the next group worth checking carefully.
The citywide picture has changed in one important way. Cutzamala is currently in much better shape than during the drought crisis, so today's neighborhood problems increasingly expose weaknesses closer to the tap: wells, pumping stations, pressure, old pipes and insufficient building storage.
That makes “Does Mexico City have a water problem?” almost too broad to be useful anymore. For anyone choosing where to live, the sharper question is whether water reliably reaches this neighborhood, this street and this particular building.
| Neighborhood or area | Borough | What worries us most | Current risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pedregal de Santo Domingo | Coyoacán | Recent month-long outage on some streets plus existing tandeo | Very high |
| San Miguel Ajusco | Tlalpan | Long-running severe intermittent supply | Very high |
| Santo Tomás Ajusco | Tlalpan | High elevation and tandeo | Very high |
| San Sebastián Tecoloxtitla | Iztapalapa | Years of unreliable supply and recent complaints | Very high |
| Santa María Aztahuacán | Iztapalapa | Chronic exposure plus repeated infrastructure disruptions | High |
| Jardines del Pedregal | Álvaro Obregón | Repeated shortages and expensive pipa dependence | High |
| Héroes de Padierna | Tlalpan | Tandeo plus major recent pipe failures | High |
| Santa Cruz Meyehualco | Iztapalapa | Large transmission failures and low-pressure episodes | High |
| Topilejo | Tlalpan | High elevation and intermittent supply | High |
| San Andrés Totoltepec | Tlalpan | Long-running rationing | High |
| San Juan Tepenahuac area | Milpa Alta | Active well failure affecting several communities | High for now |
| Portales | Benito Juárez | Recent pipe rupture | Moderate and probably temporary |
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis asks which Mexico City neighborhoods have water problems now, but there is no single citywide metric that can answer that cleanly. We separated the question into active supply disruptions, persistent or intermittent service, infrastructure failures and network stress, recent resident and official reports, and broader system conditions.
We used each type of evidence for what it can actually show. A failed well or ruptured pipe is strong evidence of an immediate local disruption, while tandeo records are more useful for identifying neighborhoods with structural exposure to intermittent service.
Freshness mattered. Recent resident reports and official incident notices were given more weight for the “right now” part of the analysis, while older tandeo records were used mainly to distinguish a one-off repair from a neighborhood with a longer history of unreliable supply.
We also looked for convergence. A single complaint can identify a real problem, but confidence is much higher when current resident reports, official rationing records, recent repairs and borough-level infrastructure data all point in the same direction.
We did not turn the process into a mechanical score. The final risk assessments reflect the combined severity, freshness, recurrence and geographic concentration of the evidence, and temporary failures were kept separate from longer-running structural problems.
Citywide conditions were used as context rather than as a shortcut. Cutzamala's recovery helps explain why reservoir scarcity is less dominant today, but it does not tell us whether a well in Milpa Alta, a pipe in Iztapalapa or a pumping system in Tlalpan is working properly.
Key sources include N+ on the month-long outage reported in Pedregal de Santo Domingo, the Mexico City Congress on repeated shortages in Jardines del Pedregal, SEGIAGUA on the San Juan Tepenahuac well failure, the Gaceta Oficial for the city's tandeo framework, Alcaldía Tlalpan on its 94 listed tandeo areas, N+ on 24-hour service in Iztapalapa, La Jornada's reporting on SUAC leak data, and Conagua on Cutzamala's recovery above 97% storage.
Other incident-level sources used to check specific claims include Alcaldía Benito Juárez on the Portales pipe failure, the Mexico City government on the Santa Cruz Meyehualco rupture, Conagua's Cutzamala storage monitoring, and Protección Civil CDMX on the Alfonso XIII water-quality episode.
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