First modification:
The area where 60% of the country’s population lives could run out of fresh water at the end of this month. The drought reduced the channels to the point that the water resource is combined with that of the La Plata river, which is more salty; and sodium levels in water doubled.
Nearly two million people living in the metropolitan region of Uruguay could be left without fresh water by the end of June, according to the estimate of State Sanitation Works (OSE). The deadline before was in May, but the rains that occurred filled the channels a bit. However, since the beginning of that month, the water coming out of the taps tastes salty and indeed has twice the amount of sodium in it.
The country has been going through a drought for three years and, at this point, the Santa Lucía River has decreased its flow. Consequently, the Paso Severino dam, which is fed by this freshwater channel and which is where the water for Montevideo comes from, is at very low levels. As of June 7, it had only 4.4 million cubic meters of water, out of the 67 million it can hold, and just a week later, it decreased to 3.7 millionaccording to OSE.
This scarcity forced the authorities to take water resources from the La Plata river, which is more salinized by the ocean currents it receives, as Ernesto Fernández Polcuch, director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Montevideo, explained to France 24. In turn, OSE asked the Ministry of Public Health to allow the sodium and chlorine levels to be increased, to exceed the usual amounts. The Ministry approved it, so the chlorine limit was 700 milligrams per liter of water and sodium went from 200 to 440 milligrams per liter.
Although the WHO recommends a sodium threshold of 200 mg, the Uruguayan minister, Karina Rando, says that the increase does not imply a health problem. But yes warned that those who suffer from severe high blood pressure or have strict diets with respect to salt, have their blood pressure checked more frequently and consume bottled water.
The paradox is that Uruguay is on one of the largest underground water reserves in the world: the Guarani Aquifer, which it shares with Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay; and has an extension of about 1.2 million square kilometers.
But the water from this does not reach Montevideo, since the aquifer covers part of the north of the country and the metropolitan area is in the south. In fact, the inhabitants of the capital area do not have water supplied from the basins of the Uruguay and Negro rivers, nor those of Lake Merín and the Atlantic Ocean. Only from the Santa Lucía river and now, in part, from the La Plata river.
In other words, there is less and less fresh water and more salt water. Given the situation, unions organized a protest for May 31, under the premise that the lack of water is “due to looting, it is not a drought.” “They want us to believe that this crisis is the product of the drought, but 50% of the drinking water was lost by the OSE itself due to the poor condition of the pipes and the lack of personnel to repair them. All the cuts in the State in public companies have an impact on the service and on the water that ends up reaching our homes ”, he claimed the president of the Federation of Officials of OSE (FFOSE), Federico Kreimerman for the portal of the central union of Uruguay PIT-CNT.
They ask that there be structural solutions, such as that a water crisis be decreed to be able to allocate more resources and that the State regulate the price of bottled water.
For now, the OSE is exploring groundwater and is distributing non-salinized water in tanker trucks for hospitals and schools. In the longer term, the construction of a new dam in Parador Tajes is planned, which will collect water from the San José and La Plata rivers to take it to the Uruguayan capital. In addition, the State is acquiring a mobile application so that people can have credit on their cell phones and buy bottled water.
Although from Unesco, Fernández insists that the main thing is to take care of water and change the culture of waste. “This must not happen again and for that we have to rethink the culture we were talking about that water is omnipresent. No. It must be preserved and treated,” concluded Fernández.
#Environment #Montevideo #metropolitan #area #Uruguay #running #water