Over the centuries of Maya urbanity, the reservoirs became toxic. The researchers say it was the cinnabar in the red paints. I'm sure the Maya were aware of boiling but that process doesn't transmute mercury into beef stew. Apparently the Blue-Green Algae was also here and cannot be boiled off (I actually didn't know this).
It likely wouldn't have taken the Maya nobility all that long to figure out the source of the local mad hatters, and to say [the obvious]. On conditions of siege, however, people were going to drink this water anyway for lack of options. Also there's use of it for irrigation, or for flushing waste downstream for that NEXT city to deal with.
This phenomenon of a toxic capital parallels the experience of Rome, which is awful in summers. Their emperors moved to Milan or just... their army camps. With the lowland Maya, we are aware of later ahauob being figureheads in front of noble oligarchs, or being replaced by foreigners. Before the cities were simply abandoned.
The southern highlands did better, having better access to water - which also meant they could thrive without lowland-Maya civilisational complexity. The north did okay too, perhaps because they used a different model to store water, and also they had cenotes to flush away the waste.
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