There is water on the Moon, as ice in polar craters, and as molecules scattered across the sunlit surface.

Orbiters mapped hydrogen at the poles for years, and in 2009 the LCROSS impactor kicked up a plume containing water. In 2020 the SOFIA airborne observatory detected molecular water in sunlit soil at Clavius crater. It's not lakes; it's chemistry. But it's the difference between hauling every drop from Earth and not.