Tijuana’s water utility loses four out of every ten liters of treated water before it reaches a paying customer. CESPT, the city’s municipal water and sewer operator, reported a 40% loss rate across its distribution network, a figure that helps explain why neighborhoods across the city endure recurring outages even when reservoirs hold adequate supply.
The disclosure came during a public session where CESPT officials outlined the scale of the problem. Of the water lost, roughly half disappears through physical leaks in aging pipes. The other half vanishes through illegal connections, broken meters, and billing errors, a category engineers call “commercial losses.” Together, they drain the system of enough water to serve hundreds of thousands of residents.
CESPT’s Aging Pipes Predate Many of Tijuana’s Colonias
Tijuana’s population has roughly tripled since 1980, growing from about 460,000 residents to an estimated 1.9 million today. Much of the city’s core water infrastructure dates to the 1970s and 1980s, when the population was a fraction of its current size. Expansion has largely kept pace through new aqueducts and pumping stations, but the older distribution lines running beneath established colonias have not been systematically replaced.
CESPT serves approximately 475,000 accounts across Tijuana and Playas de Rosarito. The utility has acknowledged for years that its pipe network suffers from deferred maintenance. In 2023, the agency reported executing emergency repairs on more than 12,000 leaks, many of them on cast-iron and asbestos-cement lines that have exceeded their useful life. Yet replacing an entire distribution network while the city continues to grow requires capital investment the utility has struggled to secure.
The 40% figure, while alarming, is not unusual for Mexican cities. Mexico’s national average for non-revenue water hovers around 43%, according to CONAGUA, the federal water commission. Some northern border cities perform worse. But the national comparison offers little comfort in a region where the Colorado River allocation that supplies much of Tijuana’s water faces ongoing pressure from drought and competing demand on both sides of the border.
Illegal taps compound the problem. Informal settlements on Tijuana’s eastern and southern periphery often connect to municipal lines without authorization. CESPT has conducted periodic crackdowns, but enforcement is difficult in colonias where thousands of families lack formal water service. Commercial theft also occurs: businesses that tamper with meters or bypass them entirely cost the utility millions of pesos in unbilled consumption each year.
Playas de Rosarito and Eastern Tijuana Bear the Brunt of Outages
The practical effect of 40% losses is that CESPT must pump and treat far more water than the population actually consumes, driving up electricity costs and straining pumping capacity. When demand spikes during summer or when a major line breaks, the system has almost no margin. That is when colonias at the end of the distribution chain, often on higher ground or farther from treatment plants, lose pressure first.
Over the past two years, Tijuana has experienced multiple episodes of extended low pressure or complete service cuts. In the summer of 2024, colonias in the Presa Este and Sánchez Taboada zones went days without reliable service. Playas de Rosarito, which shares infrastructure with Tijuana’s southern network, has seen its own recurring shortages. Neighborhoods popular with foreign residents, including Playas de Tijuana and parts of the Rosarito coast, are not immune. Disruptions typically last longest in areas with older infrastructure and higher elevation.
Residents who depend on rooftop tinaco tanks can ride out brief outages, but multi-day cuts force families to buy water from private trucks, known locally as pipas, at prices that can reach 1,500 pesos (about $85 USD) for a standard delivery. For households already paying bimonthly CESPT bills, the added cost is a source of persistent frustration.
CESPT’s current rate structure also plays a role. Water tariffs in Tijuana remain among the lowest of any major Mexican border city. Low rates limit the utility’s revenue, which in turn limits its capacity to invest in leak detection, pipe replacement, and meter upgrades. A 2022 rate increase sparked public backlash, and subsequent adjustments have been modest.
The utility said it plans to prioritize leak detection technology and targeted pipe replacement in zones with the highest loss rates. CESPT also indicated it would expand its program to regularize illegal connections, offering amnesty and formal hookups to households willing to register. No timeline or budget was specified for either initiative. The 40% loss figure was first reported by Punto Norte.