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Inadequate water management stresses water resources, impacting not only economic but also social and environmental sectors. Its consequences negatively impact the gross domestic product of affected countries by limiting economic growth. Arid coastal regions are the most severely affected due to the confluence of periods of greater demand and periods of greater scarcity. In such regions, the most reliable sources of fresh water are coastal aquifers (CAs); however, due to their current overexploitation, CAs are encountering problems such as marine intrusion (MI). In Mexico, the Costa de Hermosillo aquifer (CHA) is one of the most exploited, and at present it is experiencing the negative consequences of MI, which are harming not only quality of life of the inhabitants but also irreparably damaging the regional environment. This article aims to formulate a coastal aquifer management plan through a case study that takes environmental costs into consideration to support decision-making processes and seeks to show how sustainability strategies can be applied to recover, conserve, and sustainably exploit CAs water resources. The originality/value of this paper is the interaction of the sustainability pillars that allowed an environmental accounting evaluation as a step toward the implementation of future holistic strategies to facilitate water resource management in a sustainable development framework. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.