Montevideo, Uruguay – In recent months, since drought and mismanagement undermined the drinking water supply of my country’s capital, the water that comes out of our taps tastes of salt and smells of chemicals. Those of us who can afford bottled water use it for everything. With it we cook pasta, wash lettuce and make coffee, buying more and more plastic containers for water that end up in the landfill.
When we shower, we do it quickly and keep the windows open, because trihalomethane compounds in the steam can be carcinogenic. The washing machines are not foaming and the electric water heaters are failing due to a buildup of sodium. Dishwashers leave salty streaks on glasses and plates. Brushing your teeth tastes like taking a drink of pool water.
At the height of the crisis, sodium and chloride levels rose to double and triple the maximum values allowed by our national drinking water standards. I recently visited a slum on the outskirts of the city, where people had no choice but to drink tap water. People complained of stomach aches and diarrhea. The government has warned that children under the age of 2, pregnant women and people with high blood pressure, kidney failure or heart problems should limit their water intake or, in some cases, avoid it altogether. The Government is planning a subsidy for poor people to buy bottled water. But that is not enough.
Here in Uruguay, clean water is part of our national identity. Children are taught that the country is blessed with abundant, high-quality water, thanks to many large rivers and six large aquifers. For most of our history, we could count on rain to fill these rivers and aquifers. And in 2004, we became the first country in the world to enshrine access to safe drinking water in the Constitution.
But the most severe drought in 44 years, coupled with aging infrastructure and poor management of the Santa Lucia reservoirs, has rewritten that history. Now the metropolitan area around Montevideo, home to about 60 percent of the country’s 3.4 million people, is experiencing the consequences.
The Santa Lucía River, which supplied the capital with fresh water for more than 150 years, has almost disappeared in some sections. In February, a reservoir that until recently held up to 20 billion liters of water ran almost dry. Another was reduced, at one point, to just 2 percent capacity. As the fresh waters of the Santa Lucía have emptied, salt water from the Río de la Plata, an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, has intruded on its course. Our main water purification plant doesn’t have the technology to remove salt, so it gets into our pipes, our homes, our bodies.
The Government lacks a plan b for this crisis, which could last until October. A Senator posted on social media that we should pray for rain.
As bad as it is, Montevideo’s water crisis is not unique. In 2018, Cape Town began planning for the chaos that would ensue in the very real scenario that it could run out of water altogether. In Brazil, which holds a significant fraction of the world’s fresh water, numerous cities have restricted its use. In Mexico City, 70 percent of the population has access to water for only 12 hours a day, a 2017 United Nations study showed.
“The upcoming drought should not surprise us,” said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and clean water. “As strong and as long as it is, there must be alternative, complementary and supplementary sources,” he said, and there must be a plan to “establish priorities during the emergency”.
In a statement with other experts, Arrojo-Agudo said Uruguay “must put human consumption at the forefront, as indicated by international human rights standards,” calling the lawsuit “an ethical priority.” The government took issue with his statement, saying the chemical levels were not as alarming as claimed and action was being taken.
How did we get here? For the past 40 years, Uruguay has allowed the agricultural and mining industries to pollute the Santa Lucia and disrupt its natural cycles, damaging the supply that continued to dwindle for three years with little rain. And despite demographic and economic growth, our country did not invest in potable water reservoirs. Since March 2020, the Government has declared several emergencies for agricultural producers, granting tax exemptions and grace periods. But he waited until last month to declare an emergency for the rest of the population.
Now the government is trying to build dams on the tributaries and is planning a plant to desalinize water from the Río de la Plata, but it is unlikely to come online in the next three years. The public water company began operating new wells in the heart of the City, hoping to load tanker trucks with water from an aquifer and distribute it to hospitals.
Many of my neighbors are also drilling, hoping to find groundwater. A neighbor’s water quality test indicated that the well contained a bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, associated with infections of the blood, lungs and urinary tract.
The rain could help for now. But local weather forecasts, global climate change, and irresponsible land use point us in the same direction.
Every city in the world needs to start prioritizing their drinking water now, while there is still some chance for better outcomes. Water is our most precious resource. Keeping it safe and available should be our first priority.
Guillermo Garat is a journalist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. He forwarded his comments to [email protected].
By: Guillermo Garat
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6824089, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-07-28 15:50:08
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