Seawater Desalination Trend Sweeps Through Cancún Hotels

The high demand for drinking water in Cancún’s tourist area is prompting a growing number of hotels to seek environmental permits for the installation of reverse osmosis plants. These systems allow them to utilize brackish water for their property’s needs.

The latest establishment to consider this approach is Club Med, a 376-room hotel, which is currently in the public consultation phase for environmental approval of a new reverse osmosis plant. This plant would desalinate seawater, reducing the hotel’s reliance on the limited freshwater supplied by the private company, Aguakan.

The hotel’s proposed project aligns with a policy aimed at minimizing the consumption of potable water supplied by operating entities, thereby preserving the freshwater reserves of the aquifer for the general population. This is especially important in the coastal area of Cancún’s hotel zone, where freshwater is scarce.

Club Med has noted that the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) has previously approved the installation of reverse osmosis equipment for similar tourism projects. The proposed desalination plant, capable of supplying the 1,200 cubic meters of water demanded daily by Club Med’s 376 rooms, carries an estimated investment cost of 10 million pesos.

In a similar vein, the newly opened Grand Island, a 3,000-room hotel also located in Cancún’s hotel zone, plans to operate its own underground wells. These wells will extract saline water, process it, and provide potable water to its extensive facilities.

However, a 2023 study by the Civil Association Defending the Right to a Healthy Environment (Dmas) highlighted some concerns. The study found that since 2021, up to 19 instances of illegal sewage discharges into mangrove areas by hotels and restaurants had been identified. Additionally, there were several instances of sewer system overflows due to pipeline saturation.

The firm conducting the study, AyMA Ingeniería y Consultoría, concluded that the quality of drinking water in Cancún’s urban area varied from mediocre to poor. The worst deterioration was found in various parts of the protected natural area Mangroves of Nichupté and Nichupté Lagoon, where high concentrations of human fecal enterococci were detected.