Uruguay still can’t leave behind water crisis that strongly affects the country and, in particular, the metropolitan area, even with the rains of recent days: the dam of Severine Pass continues at its historical lows, the desalination plant that was proposed as a solution to the increase in sodium and chloride in the drinking water distributed by SBI it still cannot reach the national territory, and the days of supply in the capital are numbered.
The most recent novelty in the desperate situation of water deficit in the country is the donation by the Finnish company UPM of a desalination plant so that OSE can supply safe drinking water to hospitals and schools. It is a reverse osmosis plant that eliminates excess salt in 2,000 liters of water per hour.
This infrastructure was installed during the construction of PSU 2 in Paso de los Toros, Tacuarembó, and although the company planned to continue using it until the second semester, they decided to donate it to the state water company. OSE, for its part, will be in charge of uninstalling it, dismantling it and moving it to the metropolitan area, where the greatest difficulties are experienced in access to drinking water, within a period of two weeks.
Paso Severino, with the lowest water levels
Meanwhile, the Paso Severino dam continues with historically low levels of reserves, with 4.5 million cubic meters of water when its maximum capacity is 65 million cubic meters. Within a week, the reservoir reached lose 25% of the resource that was still availablesetting off even more alarms in the metropolitan area, whose days of supply are numbered and whose consumption of bottled water has tripled and reached peak sales of this product —which currently has a temporary tax exemption.
Already on March 8, with a summer season marked by drought and lack of water in several areas of the country, the volume of water in the dam was 25.6 million cubic meters; a month and a half later, on April 12, this level had dropped to 16.9 million, to reach 12 million on the 26th of that month.
In just over 15 days, on May 17, it recorded what would be, until then, the lowest level in its history: 6.2 million cubic meters. And in just one week, that already worrying number dropped to 4.5 million cubic meters, despite the rains that were close to 9 millimeters in that area of Santa Lucia.
In Cannelloni, more precisely in the system Atlantis, the emphasis of pando creek it is turned off daily between 4 and 8 hours; the plant is being put into operation Swan Lagoon and this allows reducing from 14,000 to 11,000 cubic meters of extraction to the system Montevideo.
About mines, the reservoir recovered 12 centimeters since last Monday and the rains over the weekend allowed the recovery of 24 centimeters of the reservoir Maggiolo. This would allow that, even if there is no rain during the month, the supply can be guaranteed for the whole of June.
The emergency dam began to work
Among so many bad news, however, there is good news: the emergency dam on the Santa Lucia Riverin it belastiqui pass —10 kilometers from the plant Running Waters— It started operating on Thursday, after a record construction, driven by the urgency of guaranteeing supply in the metropolitan area, where there were barely a week of reserves left.
The dam seeks to mix the fresh waters of the Santa Lucía River with the salty ones of the Silver riverin order to provisionally solve the minimum levels of the Paso Severino dam which, with the latest rains, managed to recover one meter in its reservoir.
However, until the rains are sufficient to restore the basins and reservoirs to their normal capacities for this time of the year, the water crisis will continue to be an unavoidable issue in the country.
Source: Ambito
