the mayor of Montevideo, Carolina Cosse. announced that the capital city of Uruguay will stop having water “in potable conditions” in a period of around 30 days, according to information provided by the National Administration of State Sanitary Works (OSE). Likewise, he confirmed that he will ask the National Emergency System (Sinae) to issue an alert to the population.
The situation is critical in Montevideo. With the entire department supplied with water whose salinity was increased by significant proportions by OSE —in order to extend the scope of current reserves—, the countdown to the end of the supply of fluid capable of being used for consumption has already begun.
“It follows from the information that we have obtained a situation in which In around 20 or 30 days, if nothing changes, we would no longer have drinkable water, but not sanitary water,” the mayor said at a press conference, adding that OSE is taking “a number of measures” in this regard. “We have a drought that has lasted longer than the longest has historically lasted. Climate change affects us hard,” she said, referring to what is already known as the worst drought in the last century in the country.
Due to this, in the morning authorities of the Municipality of Montevideo (IM) with referents of Departmental Emergency Coordination Center (Cecoed) of Sinae to generate a working group around the potability and availability of water in the metropolitan area. In this sense, Cosse reported that he will propose to the entity that it declare “a situation of alert”
“This statement is a call to attention to the population so that we all understand the situation we are in, and so that each and every one of us take our responsible actions in daily life,” he added.
Regarding the measures that are proposed to be put into practice within the framework of this dialogue table with Cecoed, Cosse indicated that it was agreed to create a work team, together with OSE, to carry out a survey of the water wells and, thus, , carry out the tasks of sampling, measuring and treating the water.
“OSE has conveyed to us its intention to incorporate tanker trucks to distribute drinking water, especially in the most vulnerable areas. In particular, it has expressed its willingness to cover hospitals and dialysis centers, even to be able to reach schools,” the mayor reported and communicated. that will work together. Along the same lines, she called for the “greatest collaboration and the best possible innovation capacity” in a not very optimistic scenario.
Inumet’s negative outlook
For his part, he Uruguayan Institute of Meteorology (Inumet) yesterday issued a report describing the rainfall projections for the basins of St. Lucia and the Silver riverand reported that “evapotranspiration over the next few days will exceed the amount of precipitation forecast.”
This means that the deficit in these basins will be even greater, since the amount of water that will be lost is more than that which will arrive in the form of rain. Likewise, “some members of the numerical models used indicate an average accumulated rainfall of less than 2mm” for this Saturday in both basins.
In a forecast extended through May 25, rains are projected between days 18 and 20with an accumulated average of less than 6 mm for the Santa Lucía basin and 10 mm for the Río de la Plata basin.
In the center-south zone of the country the water deficit continueswhile on the northwestern border “the accumulated values have already reached normal values for the month, reflected in 100% of available water in the soils above Artigas, Cerro Largo, Rivera and Thirty-three”.
Source: Ambito
