Chile faces its “structural drought” with a water rationalization plan in Santiago

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The extreme severity of the water crisis affecting Chile has given rise to an unprecedented protocol to rationalize water in Santiago. After accumulating 13 years of drought, the longest dry period in its history, the authorities of the Metropolitan Region have announced that if the flows of the rivers that supply water to the capital reach a critical point, rotating and programmed cuts will be imposed in different sectors of the region (7 million inhabitants). On May 3, the Minister of Public Works, Juan Carlos García, warned that Santiago has less accumulated water than last year, which “was already critical”. “We cannot confirm water rationing, but neither can we rule it out,” he said.

On May 3, Chile’s Meteorological Directorate announced that rainfall in the central zone would again be below normal ranges for the second quarter. The forecast of water that will fall on Santiago is 115 millimeters between May and July. As a reference, 130 millimeters fell in July 2006 alone. The city is supplied mainly by water from the Maipo and Mapocho rivers, significantly reducing their flow during the last decade due to the lack of precipitation and snow.

One of the efforts to deal with the “structural drought”, as García called it, is the Water Rationing Protocol, which contemplates four alert levels. The three main ones are: preventive early alert, in which water pressure is reduced at night – in force since August 2021; yellow alert, in which the customer feels the pressure reduction and a communication campaign is launched to save water – planned to be activated from December 2022 to April 2023; and red alert, in which 24-hour rotating cuts are applied – subject to the severity of the situation. The level of vulnerability of the six sectors into which the capital is divided will define whether the cuts are every four, six or 12 days.

Eugenio Rodríguez, Aguas Andinas’ director of clients, explains that the yellow alert is applied ten days before the Maipo and Mapocho rivers can no longer supply the city’s demand. If there is no alteration of the factors that increase the flow five days later, it is changed to a red alert. “The cuts are going to be known in advance, so people are going to be able to organize for cooking, washing… and it’s not going to be a surprise of a week-long cut as we’ve seen other times,” says Miguel Muñoz, director of the National Emergency Office of Chile’s Ministry of the Interior and Public Safety (ONEMI) in the Metropolitan Region.

Guillermo Donoso, academic and researcher at the Catholic University’s Center for Water Law and Management, considers the organizational factor negative. “International evidence shows that this system is not that effective. If I know that my water will be cut off, I accumulate before, so the effective reduction is not so high,” he says. Donoso also criticizes that the plan designed by ONEMI together with the Superintendency of Sanitation Services (SISS) and the company Aguas Andinas, at the request of Metropolitan Governor Claudio Orrego, is not equitable: “There is a four-person household that is consuming 300 liters versus another single-person household without a garden, which consumes 100 liters. Why does the latter have to assume the costs of a cut-off to deal with people who have high consumption? There would be no instrument to manage the water”.

Another aspect contemplated in the plan is the impact it may have on the education sector, Muñoz explains, since when there is no water in a commune, schools must remain closed: “There are schools that offer up to three meals a day, and they are the only meals for those children, so we have prioritized having a response strategy for them”.

This protocol is intended for next summer. The most complex months are between December and January, so ten months’ notice is given. It comes more than a decade after the turning point in the Chilean capital. “In 2010, there was a radical change. The 400 millimeters of waterfall were never achieved again, leaving the mountain range with snow and recharging the groundwater,” Rodriguez notes.

The president, Gabriel Boric, signed the new Water Code, which had been 11 years in the making. The regulation prioritizes access to water for human consumption and, for the first time, establishes climate change as a threat. Chile, which in 2021 experienced the fourth driest year in its history, is the only country with its water privatized, an extra factor of tension in the complex scenario. The State is the owner of the resource but distributes the rights free of charge to private parties who, in turn, can sell them.

Almost half of the territories are under a water shortage decree that obliges farmers to agree with the distributors of water for human use. “We have agreed with them, and in periods of peak demand, we are buying water from them [compensation for trespassing],” says Aguas Andinas’ Rodríguez. One of the issues being discussed by those responsible for writing a new constitution – to be put to a referendum on September 4 – is the legal framework to guarantee access to water, rights over it, and its distribution and use.

With information from El País