With the certainty that it will not rain in the coming days, the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou, advanced the measures that his government will take to provide the population with the necessary water supply. The daily reports that will be provided to the population will have the active participation and responsibility of the national government, the Ministry of Health and State Sanitary Works (OSE). Besides, The “hydric emergency” announcement seeks to expedite the bureaucracy that essential purchases go through for the work that seeks to create a dam on the San José River.
In an emergency meeting, the President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, called a meeting in the Executive Tower with the responsible authorities to deal with the crisis. Given the certainty that there will be no rain in the medium term, each of the referents made a balance of the situation and a future perspective. As a result, the first president announced what no one wanted to hear: “water emergency”.
“We are going to keep the population informed of the quality of the supply, (and) eventually of the days that may remain of a certain amount of water ahead,” said Lacalle Pou. The announcements will be disclosed centrally either by the Head of State himself or by the Secretary of the Presidency, Álvaro Delgado.
In a press conference, Lacalle Pou also reported the exemption from taxes on bottled water and the beginning of the construction of a dam that in about 30 days will offer a new source of purification. “Because of this tax exemption, we assume that the price has to go down. Without the taxes that are charged there should be a noticeable drop,” he said.
“We have just decreed a water emergency for the metropolitan area. This enables us in the works that we are discussing (a) to have faster and easier legal processes and, also, at the same time, we are exonerating bottled water from taxes,” the president explained.
Faced with this panorama, the ruling party has two paths: the reduction of the Internal Specific Tax (Imesi) that although it was applied by decree, the discount of the Value Added Tax (VAT) must be done by law. Faced with this panorama and with the announcement of a “water emergency”, Lacalle Pou will try to ensure that the vice president and president of the General Assembly, Beatriz Argimón, can expedite parliamentary treatment as quickly as possible.
“The water supply is not going to be cut off. Therefore, the scenario that can lead to is worse quality,” said Lacalle Pou, when asked what the worst scenario would be in the face of this crisis. The Uruguayan Institute of Meteorology (Inumet) reported in May of this year that the drought that Uruguay has been facing for three years “it is unprecedented” and “it is the worst since there are records in the South American country, at the beginning of the 20th century.”
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Water supply and quality
The supply is “assured”, emphasized Lacalle Pou. Although he stressed that the “quality” variable can no longer be guaranteed: “Later on, we will tell you about its quality if it deteriorates at any time or there is a change planned,” he added.
During the announcement, he remarked that the new “rain forecasts failed” and that further complicated the picture. In this sense, he explained that “the figures will surely rise” for chlorides and sodium. “We are talking with the technicians of the Ministry of Public Health to what extent we can take these records so that the water continues to be drinkable, which is our first goal”added Lacalle Pou at the conference.
The San José reservoir as the only solution
The announcement of the “water emergency” serves to ease the bureaucracy in essential purchases for the work that seeks to create a reservoir on the San José River. this dam estimated at US$20 million It will compensate for the critical state that the Severino Pass is going through, the main drinking water reserve in the metropolitan area.
To the 20 million dollars that the works will cost to build a dam on the San José River that will generate a freshwater reservoir to compensate for the critical state of Paso another US$ 10 million will be added that the State will stop collecting in the reduction of the tax on bottles of water. Given this scenario, the president stressed that the money will not stop the “necessary” measures at this time.
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The construction is complex, because the objective is to reinforce the Santa Lucía river, for which the adequate infrastructure will have to be generated, which will consist of pipes and possible channels that can transfer the water from a point now several kilometers away.
In his speech, he informed that the work on the reservoir will begin on Tuesday 6/20 and detailed: “The pipeline has already been ordered, in this case to Brazil, and a plastic pipeline to Argentina,” plus other materials that will arrive in the following weeks. The first part of the construction, the one referring to the reservoir, is supposed to be completed in “10, 12 days,” the president continued. According to specialists, the complete work and its set-up could take a month.
The list of announced measures
Daily report on water quality Policies such as the subsidy applied by the Ministry of Social Development to the vulnerable population will be maintained, which is guaranteed the free provision of two liters of bottled water per day. The supply of drinking water to hospitals, schools, residences and dependencies of the Institute for Children and Adolescents of Uruguay (INAU) will continue. In each daily report, the “base price” of bottled water will be communicated, which will be defined by the Consumer Defense of the Ministry of Economy, but which a priori expects that there will be a decrease in the values in the gondolas. And he warned that there may be “worse” water quality.
NT/fl