Water service returned to Playas de Rosarito on Wednesday after CESPT (Comisión Estatal de Servicios Públicos de Tijuana) repaired the Herrera-La Misión aqueduct, which was accidentally severed by a private fiber-optic contractor near the Santa Mónica neighborhood. More than 50 Rosarito colonias, including Zona Centro, Real del Mar, and Punta Bandera, lost service when the line broke. CESPT said full pressure should normalize within 24 hours.
The repair, however, does nothing for Tijuana. More than 200 colonias across Otay, eastern Tijuana, and parts of the central city remain without consistent water following a separate failure at the Booster El Carrizo pumping system. That equipment is critical: it increases the flow of water sent from the El Carrizo dam to the El Florido treatment plant, which supplies a large share of Tijuana’s drinking water.
Tijuana Outage Now in Its Fourth Day
The Booster El Carrizo failure began Tuesday afternoon, and as of Wednesday evening, CESPT had provided no estimated restoration timeline. CESPT Director General Mónica Vega Aguirre confirmed that the damaged equipment was transported to workshops at the Río Colorado-Tijuana Aqueduct (ARCT) facility to speed up repairs. Technicians and outside specialists are working around the clock.
According to San Diego Red, CESPT announced that gradual restoration of water to the 200 affected Tijuana colonias will not begin until Tuesday, July 14. Initially, 203 colonias were affected, but by Wednesday afternoon the number grew to more than 250 as additional areas reported low pressure or total loss of service. Residents in Juan Ojeda near Otay and the Aldo Esquer district are among those hardest hit.
Water Trucks Deployed but Overwhelmed
CESPT is dispatching free water trucks (pipas) to affected neighborhoods, but the scale of the outage has overwhelmed the tanker fleet. Vega Aguirre said the agency is maintaining service brigades in affected areas while repairs continue. Residents can call CESPT’s service lines to request deliveries.
This is the second major water crisis to hit the Tijuana-Rosarito corridor in 2026. In January, more than 690 colonias lost water for nearly four days during rehabilitation work on the Florido-Aguaje Aqueduct, affecting over 1.5 million people. CESPT Director Jesús García Castro acknowledged at the time that aging infrastructure complicated those repairs.
What Residents Should Do Now
Rosarito residents can expect service to return gradually. Tijuana residents in the affected zones face at least five more days without reliable water. Rooftop cisterns (tinacos) and ground-level storage tanks remain a practical necessity for anyone living in the region, where summer heat puts maximum stress on aging pipelines and pumping systems. CESPT has not explained the root cause of the Booster El Carrizo failure.
This story was originally reported by Punto Norte and San Diego Red.