Drought in Chile: the governor of Santiago announced a water rationing plan

The governor of Santiago de Chile, Claudio Orrego, announced on Monday an unprecedented water rationing plan for the capital in the face of the possible need to cut off supplies, a scenario that the authorities do not rule out in the short term in the face of the severe drought that the trans-Andean country is going through.

“We have to realize the situation we are in. We have been drought for 12 years now, so there are many possibilities that we will have this type of situation,” Orrego said in a press release.

The protocol establishes four types of alert depending on the emergency, the most serious being the “red alert”, which would allow rotating cuts of up to 24 hours.

Rationing would affect more than 1.5 million people out of the nearly 8 million people who inhabit the Metropolitan Region and who supply water from the Mapocho River and the Maipo River.

Before, the governor said, there could be three other scenarios: green alert, which implies the prioritization of groundwater use; preventive warning, which requires verification of resources; and yellow alert, implies the reduction of water outflow pressures.

This plan would come into effect if the Government decreed water rationing, something that last March, the new president, Gabriel Boric, did not rule out in the short or medium term, especially in the three areas of eastern Santiago that are experiencing the most critical situation.

According to the president, it is Las Condes, Lo Barnechea and Vitacura, three of the most affluent neighborhoods in the country, who are most at risk as they also consume the most water, exceeding the world average by four or five times, according to a study by the University of Chile.

Chile is the country with the greatest water crisis in the entire western hemisphere and 76% of its territory has been affected by drought for a decade, according to Greenpeace.

According to the Chilean Meteorological Directorate (DMC), 2021 was the fourth driest year since there were records and all regions had a 50% deficit in rainfall, especially those in the central area, which hosts Santiago.

Experts blame the lack of water on the scarcity of rainfall, but also to the water ownership regime, which is 80% in private hands, mainly by large agricultural, mining and energy companies.

This system is based on the 1981 Water Code - drafted during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) - a regulation that gave water rights in perpetuity and turned them into tradable goods.

Boric met last Sunday with his ministers to take stock and “self-criticize” the management of the first month at the helm of the country, said the spokesman for the Executive, Camila Vallejo.

“Obviously it has been a difficult installation process. We have had some problems that we have been facing, which certainly shows that it is not enough to say that we are a new government, which is being installed from scratch, but also requires recognizing that we can do much better,” Vallejo said at a press conference.

The official indicated that after four weeks since the assumption on March 11, the government has had to face “problems, errors and difficulties” on a daily basis that have earned it the criticism of the right-wing opposition and some citizens.

Particularly affected was the image of the Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, following a security breach that exposed her during a visit to the south to the area in conflict between the Mapuche people and the State, and an erroneous accusation of migration management in a congressional appearance.

Despite this, Boric stated that he trusts and supports Siches, who had to apologize publicly after internal communication failures in the cabinet.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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