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MEXICO CITY (AP) -- On a bank of Villa Victoria reservoir, where in other years boats might have used them to anchor, 10 concrete blocks lie exposed to the sun. They should be under water, but that was before severe drought dropped the reservoir to the lowest level that Gabriel Bejarano has seen since he moved back to his grandfather's farm a decade ago.
"The water is supposed to come up to here," Bejarano, a veterinarian, said as he pointed toward a fence a hundred yards back from the reservoir's edge on a recent morning.
The dipping level on the north shore of this lake near Toluca is a major problem for Mexico City, about 77 miles (125 kilometers) to the west. Villa Victoria -- about one-third its usual level this time of year -- and two other drought-depleted reservoirs make up most of the Cutzamala system, which serves more than 20 million people and is at a historical low for this time of year.
Even more worrisome: Mexico's rainy season is just about over, and its departure will end any realistic hope of refilling the reservoirs before next year. The Mexican National Water Commission on Tuesday announced water restrictions equivalent to about 8% of the Cutzamala system's flow, and millions of users in Mexico City and Toluca fear even greater restrictions over the winter.
Mexico City gets more than a quarter of its water from those reservoirs. Most of the rest is drawn from the Valley of Mexico's increasingly depleted aquifer. Neighborhoods without as many wells -- thus more reliant on the reservoirs -- will feel the shortages first and most acutely.
The drought hasn't been limited to the valley. Seventy-five percent of Mexico is currently in drought, according to the most recent data from the country's National Meteorological Service, including "extreme" drought across much of Central and North Mexico and some "exceptional" drought in the states of Durango and San Luis Potosí. The government has distributed emergency water by truck in Durango throughout the summer, plus almost 40 million liters of water across eight other drought-stricken states.
Meanwhile, navigation and tourism on Lake Patzcuaro, known for iconic Day of the Dead celebrations in the western state of Michoacan, risk drying up with increasingly low water levels.
In Mexico City, it's not unusual in recent years to see some water shortages just before the rainy season. In spring 2021, Villa Victoria was at one-third its normal capacity in what then-Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum described as the city's worst drought in 30 years. But summer rains largely alleviated that drought, part of a weather pattern where warmer months typically usher in low-pressure weather systems that bring rain.
But that pattern was disrupted this year as El Nino conditions created a wind shear over the Gulf of Mexico, Tereza Cavazos, an oceanography professor with the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research in Baja California, told The Associated Press.