Chile Implements Water Rationing Plan
The dried-up El Yeso Reservoir, located in the Andes; Chile has been in drought for 12 years. Photo: Javier Torres/AFP
Chile is on its 13th year of drought, the longest it has seen in a thousand years. Water availability has decreased to 37 percent in the last 30 years, and this could potentially decrease by 50 percent by 2060. As the situation worsens, the capital of Santiago has announced a water rationing plan. The city’s governor, Claudio Orrego, laments that “a city can’t live without water. And we’re in an unprecedented situation in Santiago’s 491-year history where we have to prepare for there to not be enough water for everyone who lives here.”
The plan includes a four-tier alert system. The first stage, ‘green,’ focuses on water conservation and measures to protect groundwater. The next, ‘preventive early warning,’ involves public service announcements. Stage three is ‘yellow,’ which escalates to restricting water pressure, and the final stage, ‘red,’ requires water rationing. This would include water cuts to rotating areas of the city for a maximum of 24 hours. The stage is decided by measuring the deficit of water levels in the Maipo and Mapocho rivers, which are the main sources of water for over 1.6 million households.
In the past decade, Chile’s drought has led to low reservoirs and dried lakes. This in turn has caused massive crop failures and the death of livestock, devastating farms and the agricultural industry. Smaller subsistence farmers have been disproportionately hurt. Currently, over 400,000 people in rural areas depend on water deliveries from tanking trucks.
A cow is seen on land that used to be filled with water, at the Aculeo Lagoon in Paine, Chile on Jan. 9, 2019. Photo: Reuters
One of the main causes of the drought, according to a study published last year by the Journal of Climate, is a blob in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. It is a large area of warm water that has been steadily growing over the past few years. The warmer water leads to warmer air, and wind patterns push the higher temperatures towards Chile, which decrease rainfall and melt snow. Although this natural phenomenon typically disappears after a few years, this one has continued to grow since 2010.
The study claims a connection between the “blob” and Chile's megadrought, and also that its existence has been extended due to climate change. One of the co-authors, Kyle Clem, explains that “this thing started in the central tropical Pacific, gets some warming, the pattern continues for 40 years -- then you just have added heat being pumped into it from increasing greenhouse gasses. That's what has allowed the Blob to reach such extreme rates of warming... which is why we're seeing a drought that is so unprecedented."
But it is not just the effects of climate change that are making the drought so pronounced. Another study, by the Journal of Sustainability, argues that the systematic privatization of water and overexploitation by humans has caused bodies of water to dry up in Chile, including the Aculeo Lagoon in 2018. Human activity like diverting rivers and pumping groundwater from aquifers has increased since the 1990s, when the state gave out water rights to various agricultural companies, especially avocado and cherry producers. The changes in water flows, coupled with droughts, has caused permanent damage.
There are few short-term options for Chile. Beyond water rationing, the government can focus on infrastructure, such as reservoirs and desalination plants. For its citizens, it can try to overturn the general mindset that water is an exploitable resource rather than a right, in order to protect millions of citizens from water scarcity. But at the end of the day, only reversing climate change can truly solve the problem. As Governor Orrego explains, “this is the first time in history that Santiago has a water rationing plan due to the severity of climate change. It’s important for citizens to understand that climate change is here to stay. It’s not just global, it’s local.”