{"id":14636,"date":"2023-07-20T20:52:18","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T17:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=14636"},"modified":"2023-07-20T20:52:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T17:52:20","slug":"montevideo-shows-the-bleak-future-without-drinking-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=14636","title":{"rendered":"Montevideo shows the bleak future without Drinking Water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For more and more, the consequences of climate change are literally the torture of the drop, as the combination of drought and aridity leaves entire populations without clean drinking water. This is exactly the situation millions of residents of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, have been experiencing lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A country located in South America – that is, not even in the northern hemisphere, which is “baked” almost from one end to the other these days by extreme heat in the middle of summer. In Uruguay, on the contrary, winter prevails during this period. But in Montevideo and the wider metropolitan area – home to 1.7 million people, almost half the country’s population – it has been raining for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For three years now, it has been plagued by a drought unprecedented in national times – the worst in the last 74 years since records were kept – with limited rainfall and now a tragic lack of drinking water. Although it rained briefly the other day, the water level in the Passo Severino dam – the main source of drinking water for the capital – remains dangerously low: at 7.6% of its capacity, down from 2% in previous days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent estimate is that the reserve is just over 5 million cubic meters of water, while the residents of Montevideo and the metropolitan area consume about half a million cubic meters of water per day. Forecasters meanwhile are warning that the lack of rain will continue at least until spring – well into September in the southern hemisphere, that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waiting for the\u2026 miracle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having now essentially only hoped for miracles – although it bears a huge share of responsibility for the nightmarish situation – the Uruguayan government warned a few days ago that, at some point, the taps will stop producing water suitable for drinking. However, he declined to specify when or for how long. A state of emergency has been declared in the meantime.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In this context, the pumping of water from rivers that are closer to the Atlantic Ocean, such as the R\u00edo de la Plata, was ordered. Brackish, they are mixed with the fresh water of the reservoir in Paso Severino, in order to strengthen the available reserves. But when it reaches the taps through the water supply network, consumers are in for an unpleasant experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complaints are mounting that, although the authorities call it drinkable, it tastes bad. Not coincidentally, the Ministry of Health increased the permissible sodium levels per liter of water to twice the normal limit, far exceeding the limits of the World Health Organization. In order to protect his\u2026 backs, he called on the vulnerable groups to consume bottled water, especially those with high blood pressure and pregnant women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corresponding recommendations were made to parents of infants and young children for meal preparation. Measures were announced to support poor households, with the distribution of free two liters of bottled water every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all residents, the product was exempted from taxes. At least for now. Unfortunately, sales of bottled water have skyrocketed as no one in the Montevideo metropolitan area feels safe drinking tap water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even with the quasi-government subsidy, this is an additional burden on household costs. For many poor people, the two free liters a day are not enough and buying more is financially prohibitive. All this, in a country that in 2004 became the first in the world to declare access to clean drinking water a constitutional right of its citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, a lot has changed since then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man-made disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also the national water supply network has antiquated pipes. Only recently has their repair or replacement begun, despite the fact that it has long been established that about 40% of drinking water is lost through leaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the responsibility is, however, generally accepted by the right-wing current president, Louis Lacaille Pou.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main reason why he is now denounced by the opposition, organizations and angry citizens is his water management policy. Along with the power, his predecessor in office, Tabares Vasquez, had handed him plans in 2020 to build a dam on the Santa Lucia River to increase fresh water supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The studies had started since 2013, were completed in 2019 and an 80 million dollar loan had been approved by the Latin American Development Bank (CAF). But the Kasupa Dam was never built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current Uruguayan government rejected the project and gave priority to another, to be undertaken by a private contractor. Its construction is scheduled to begin at the end of 2023 and will involve the treatment of brackish water to supply the metropolitan area in Montevideo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UN experts are also critical of the Uruguayan government, warning of dangers from the “continuous degradation of water quality, due to the increase in salinity levels”, which affects more than 60% of the population. It characterizes the recommendation of the health authorities to use bottled water as a potential “de facto privatization of water”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s not drought, it’s looting”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The streets of Montevideo have recently been filled with people in demonstrations against the mismanagement of water resources. And especially for the benefit of private profit.
“It’s not drought, it’s looting!” is one of the slogans that are heard more and more often now in Uruguay.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The reasons are obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Water for human consumption represents only 5% of the total supply of drinking water,” the UN experts point out in their statement. The rest is consumed mainly by water-intensive industries: from soybean and rice crops, to livestock farms and pulp mills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the UN, “non-prioritization of use is unacceptable”. According to the protesters, organizations and opposition parties, a logical solution is to impose a special fee on large industries for the misuse of water. A public good, which according to the country’s own Constitution cannot be privatized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar measures had been considered since 2009. However, they were never implemented. Just last month, meanwhile, the largest – and third overall in its territory – pulp mill began operating in Uruguay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finnish-owned, the new plant is estimated to use 129.6 million liters of water per day, polluting the adjacent Rio Negro River. Huge amounts of water are expected to be consumed by the tech giant Google, which recently bought 72 hectares of land in southern Uruguay to build a data center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizations complain that cooling the servers will require 7.6 million liters of water per day. To mitigate the reactions, the Ministry of Industry announced that Google is revising its plans, focusing on the construction of a smaller data center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, with domestic consumers, the government has so far not announced any measures to limit the use of water by industries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more and more, the consequences of climate change are literally the torture of the drop, as the combination of drought and aridity leaves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[820,2810,390,1168],"tags":[957,2754,4507,4148],"class_list":["post-14636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-climate_environment","category-politics","category-science-technology","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-uruguay","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14640,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14636\/revisions\/14640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}