National Water Law and data centers in Mexico: the 3 permits your operator does not tell you about
In the planning of your data center, water almost always shows up at the end: when you have already bought the land and you are processing the building permit.
A data center cools by evaporation, consumes water for fire protection and in technical floors, and returns wastewater. None of that is resolved with a building permit.
The contract with the operator covers power, redundancy and availability, and rarely the water rights. The National Water Law, after the reform of December 11, 2025, orders that matter and delegates it to the National Water Commission (CONAGUA).
Permit 1: concession to exploit groundwater
Exploitation of national water is carried out through a concession or assignment granted by the Federal Executive through CONAGUA. Extracting from a well for industrial cooling is an exploitation subject to that title, no matter who drilled the well.
Article 18 allows free use of the subsoil, but that freedom disappears once the Federal Executive establishes a regulated zone, a closure zone or a reserve. A well inherited from agricultural land can have water and still have no title transferable to industrial use.
Article 29 requires installing the meters, keeping them in operation and paying the corresponding fees. The 2025 reform reinforces the registry: the exploitation must be registered in the National Public Water Registry, which now provides legal certainty over titles.
The Water Authority must answer applications within sixty business days of filing, with the complete file. The resolution depends on the average annual availability of the water.
Permit 2: concession title for surface water
When the campus is supplied from a river, a dam or an irrigation canal, the title falls on the surface water and the well permit is no longer sufficient. They are different rights.
Channels, water bodies and the adjacent federal zones are national assets whose administration corresponds to CONAGUA. Occupying them without a concession is a punishable infraction.
If the property borders a channel, the federal zone strip can reduce the buildable area even when the title deed is clean.
The most used alternative is not to eliminate the permit, but to change the source: recharge the aquifer, capture rainwater and treat water on site, always before the authority.
Permit 3: wastewater discharge permit
Article 88 requires a discharge permit issued by the Water Authority to discharge wastewater into receiving bodies that are national waters. It also applies when the discharge infiltrates land that could contaminate the subsoil or the aquifers.
If your data center irrigates, injects or lets its effluent percolate, you are required to comply through this route
Article 88 BIS adds obligations: treat the water when the permit and the standards require it, install meters and sampling access points, report process changes and keep the monitoring for five years.
The standard sets the quality. NOM-001-SEMARNAT-2021, published in the DOF on March 11, 2022, establishes the permissible limits of contaminants in discharges to receiving bodies owned by the Nation, with separate tables for general parameters and for metals and cyanides.
There is a fast track that does not apply to a data center. Article 88 BIS 1 allows domestic discharges with written notice, if the volume does not exceed 300 cubic meters per month, the water comes from municipal networks and the process does not handle heavy metals or cyanides.
Closure zones and reserves: the filter that can stop the project
Title Five authorizes the Federal Executive to decree regulated zones, closure zones and reserves of national water. The definition of a “closure zone” is precise: areas where no additional exploitations are authorized beyond those legally established, due to deterioration in quantity or quality.
Article 41 allows declaring a total or partial reserve for domestic and urban public use, for public service electricity generation and for minimum ecological protection flows. In a scarcity context, domestic use has priority.
In regulated or closure zones, even freely accessed water requires a concession or assignment, a comprehensive basin management plan and permits for the drilling works. Buying land with untitled wells solves nothing.
What happens if you build without them
Article 119 enumerates the infractions. For a data center, the relevant ones are discharging in contravention of the Law, extracting beyond what is authorized, exploiting water without a title, and drilling in closure or reserved zones without a permit.
Article 120 penalizes them with fines of up to 30,000 Units of Measurement and Update and with temporary or permanent closure. Article 122 additionally allows the closure of the wells and of the intake works.
There is a layer that does not show up in the fine. Article 96 BIS 1 obliges whoever contaminates a receiving body to repair or compensate the environmental damage and to restore the body to its previous state, without prejudice to administrative, criminal or civil sanctions.
That cost is not budgeted in the original project. And the building permit depends on legitimate permits: without a title, it can be conditioned or invalidated.
Checklist before signing
Sources
National Water Law, text in force with the reform of December 11, 2025 (Chamber of Deputies).
National Water Commission procedures: concessions, assignments and discharge permits.
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