Assessing Industrial Impact on Water Sustainability in El Bajío, Guanajuato State, Mexico

Five municipalities in El Bajío present the highest industrial investments: Celaya, Irapuato, León, Salamanca, and Silao. Public and private investments, further to the support received from the government, have been decisive to industrialize the zone. The official discourse to encourage these activities has emphasized the economic and social benefits for inhabitants, the decrease in the use of water volumes, and the consequent improvement of water sources in each region. The main objective of the present work is to present a global industrial impact index to evaluate the industrial impact on water management by analyzing the evolution of some parameters regarding the official data available, in order to determine whether the industry has a positive outcome on the environmental, social, economic and hydrological aspects. For this study, we use Fuzzy Logic (FL) to complete a previous study, which was conducted using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A combination of both approaches is used to define the global impact of industrialization, and the results obtained show that the benefits claimed by governmental policies are not being achieved. The use of this proposed index may guide the decision-making processes to encourage water sustainability.