Water scarcity in Uruguay: How the city of Montevideo ran out of drinking water

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Dozens of people come to the water point every day to fill up their bottles and canisters

Photo: Pablo Albarenga / DER SPIEGEL

José Santellán's treasure lies in his backyard, between stacks of firewood, chickens running around and a rusty bicycle: a hose sticks out of the ground and reaches through the garden fence to the street. "Free water," reads a sign on the street side, "without salt." Santellán, 61, takes a sip from the tube, "Mmhm," he says.

On this afternoon in July, there is a lot of activity at the improvised watering hole in Marindia, about 40 kilometers east of Uruguay's capital Montevideo: old people, families with children, young couples fill plastic bottles and large six-liter canisters. The water is pumped up from a depth of 20 meters and is clean, as confirmed by an analysis that Santellán hung on the garden fence.

"More valuable than gold, diamonds and oil," says the ex-policeman. He could not have imagined that the old well in his garden would one day become so existential: Actually, safe, clean water from the tap was a matter of course in Uruguay – but that is a thing of the past.

Since April at the latest, drinking water has been scarce in Montevideo. The freshwater reserves of the Paso-Severino reservoir, the city's most important water source, fell to an all-time low, at times to around one percent of their capacity. The metropolitan area is experiencing the worst drought in more than a hundred years. There is a water emergency.

For months, salty water from the Rio de la Plata was added to the tap water; this leads to a higher concentration of sodium and chlorine. The government had raised the maximum permitted levels. What came out of the tap, sometimes after an extended rattling, tasted like salt, mud and chlorine until recently. Prolonged showering was warned because of the fumes. Officially, the water is considered drinkable for the general population. Recently, the water quality has improved again due to rainfall – but those who can afford it buy plastic bottles.

Uruguay is the model country in South America: it has the highest per capita income in the region and a relatively egalitarian society, has a fairly good school system and generates more than 80 percent of its electricity from renewables. The country is considered one of the most modern and stable democracies in the world. It was the first to enshrine the human right to clean water in its constitution.

And then? Where once millions of litres of water were dammed, at times only a pool meandered, the earth looked like gnarled tree bark. Priests prayed for rain; the president declared the fight far from over. How could it have come to this in a country like Uruguay? And what does the example of Montevideo mean for the rest of the world?

The search for answers leads to Maldonado, about a two-hour drive east of Montevideo. On the way to Mariana Meerhoff's office, you pass laboratories and pile up small and large canisters and tubes for water samples. Meerhoff, 48, is a limnologist who researches inland water systems and teaches at the University of the Republic.

"Water is the prerequisite for life," she explains, "and a matter of national security." A crisis has been waiting for them for a long time. She sees the cause in a mixture of climatic variability, climate change and political failure.

The La Niña weather phenomenon has been causing a severe drought in the region for about two to three years, and a water emergency has been in effect for agriculture since last October. "The situation is exacerbated by extreme heat waves, which are attributable to climate change and lead to more evaporation, less water and poorer water quality."

In addition, there would be an inadequate state infrastructure. In Montevideo, around 50 percent of drinkingwater is lost due to defects such as leaking pipes or is illegally diverted. In addition, the city and the metropolitan region obtain their water almost exclusively from a single source – far too high a risk.

"In times like these, when climate change is intensifying extreme weather events, we have to be smarter, prepared for the unexpected, we always need a plan B and C," says Meerhoff. She expectssimilar scenarios in the future, not only in her home country, but worldwide. "In Europe, the Mediterranean region is very vulnerable," she says, "and parts of Germany have also been experiencing a drought for three years and the high temperatures are breaking records."

Uruguay, like many countries in the region, has abandoned the protection of natural resources such as water in order to promote economic development. Excessive use by industries was permitted, for example through the establishment of foreign paper mills. The production of beef and the cultivation of eucalyptus, soy and rice also consume enormous amounts of water. According to the researcher, a recent change in the law has even led to farms being encouraged to create their own reservoirs for irrigation.

Meerhoff considers this to be fatal. "What happens if we stop the natural water cycles? When we stop moving water through dams? We weaken it, its ability to regenerate." The stagnant water is virtually overfed. "All the nutrients that enter the water through fertilizers, the detachment of sediments from the soil or even through flooding are like a kind of buffet for certain organisms in the water that the water eats over." At some point, its "immune system" is overwhelmed, it becomes sick, so to speak, which is called eutrophication.

In the past, there have already been several water crises in Uruguay, triggered by the contamination with cyanobacteria. "Warmer, stagnant water with too many nutrients – these are the perfect conditions for the reproduction of such organisms that produce toxic substances." And one should not be under any illusions: no treatment plant in the world can remove all pollutants and toxins from water. Meerhoff now hopes that the severe crisis will act as a warning shot, not only for Uruguay, but for the whole world.

Meanwhile, the Uruguayan government is relying on economic measures: it has reduced the tax on bottled water. Pregnant women and other risk groups receive subsidies for the purchase of two liters per day per person. According to a survey, only six percent of Montevideo's population still drink water from the tap – although the government stubbornly claims that the water is safe. When asked, a spokesman for the president referred to statements made by the Minister of Health in front of parliament: "At the level where we are today, the water is drinkable, but there are some people with certain tastes who do not like it or do not want to drink it." The definition of drinkable water is partly subjective and depends on each individual. She herself drinks the water.

The six percent, they joke in the city, would probably have to be the politicians.

The city administration has drilled holes in public parks to supply hospitals with groundwater, for example. Plastic bottle waste has increased fivefold, explains Ignacio Lorenzo Arana, Director of Waste and Environmental Management, who has recently been appointed responsible for water communication. Does he drink water from the tap? He squirms a little, difficult question, then he admits: only for showering.

Elena Saravia, 47, doesn't have that choice. "Water bottles? Who's going to pay for it?" she asks. The plump woman lives on the outskirts of Montevideo in a slum called Nuevo Comienzo, which means new beginning, twice a week she goes cleaning.

One morning in July, she is standing in her small hut, cobbled together from wooden beams and corrugated iron, cooking a lentil stew with vegetables. The water, she says, has a "terrible taste". The first time, she spit it out right away. In the meantime, she only drinks it in the form of tea or coffee with a lot of sugar. Sometimes, she says, she gets sick. Her neighbor says, "Drinking makes you thirsty more."

Saravia suffers from high blood pressure, so she actually belongs to the risk group that should not drink from the tap. But the doctor told her that her illness was not chronic, so she was not eligible for the state grant program. Saravia shrugs: "If I'm going to die tomorrow, I'll die, for this reason or for another."

Recently, independent experts from the United Nations even reprimanded the government: One panel demanded that the country prioritize "human consumption" of drinking water. The consumption of the population accounts for just five percent of the total supply – it is not acceptable not to put it first.

The game of political recriminations has long since begun. The left-wing city blames the crisis on the conservative national government. But in 15 years in power, even the progressives have enabled the exploitation of water and have not developed a secure infrastructure. Uruguay's legendary ex-president José Mujica recently admitted: "We were all asleep."

The internationally renowned environmental scientist Eduardo Gudynas sees it the same way: "Both the government and the opposition are incapable of thinking in ecological contexts," he complains. The crisis is not least a question of political and social mentality, which must change. Gudynas, 63, wearing a striped wool sweater, sits outside the cafeteria of a library in the Cordón neighborhood. He doesn't want to order anything.

"What we are experiencing is a unique experiment. It's the first time that a city has run out of drinking water and replaced it with salty water," he says. In contrast to the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, for example, the question of consumption is not even addressed. No attempt had been made to ration water. Instead, people are forced to buy water in the supermarket.

"De facto, this is a privatization of drinking water," he explains. This is happening in a new way – without having to privatize the infrastructure for it. Instead, the water itself is simply transferred to the market. The natural resource would thus be transformed from a common good into a commodity. Gudynas considers this to be unconstitutional, after all, the Uruguayan state is obliged to supply people with drinking water.

Such accusations have "no relation to reality," a spokesman for the president told SPIEGEL. The water delivered to Montevideo and the metropolitan region is drinkable.

In fact, however, the latest plans of his government do not bode well: A new drinking water treatment plant is to be built on the Rio de la Plata to supply the city – in a region where there are always problems with salty water in the river, as experts warn. A desalination plant has not yet been planned.

Salty water in the pipes leads to more inequality, Gudynas explains. Trust is dwindling, and those who can buy bottles. And so, in turn, the pressure to provide everyone with high-quality, clean water decreases. He believes, "If this can happen here, it can happen anywhere."

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