Uruguay is facing a severe drought that has led the country to resort to brackish water sources, raising concerns about the drinking water supply in Montevideo and the metropolitan region, where more than half of the population lives. According to official data, this drought is the worst recorded in the last 74 years since records have been kept. The Paso Severino reservoir, the main freshwater reserve in the area, has only 18 days of water due to the lack of rainfall.
Faced with this exceptional situation, the state-owned company Obras Sanitarias del Estado (OSE) decided to add brackish water from the Santa Lucia River to compensate for the shortage. However, this measure has led to the water supplied by OSE containing sodium and chloride levels above the limits established in current regulations. As a result, citizens have had to resort to bottled water to avoid consuming poor-quality water.
The authorities claim that the water supplied is safe but recommend limiting consumption to one liter per day for people with high blood pressure and avoiding it altogether in cases of chronic kidney disease, heart failure, cirrhosis, and pregnant women. This situation has also affected the population economically, as the price of bottled water has increased and the sale of this product in supermarkets has tripled.
In view of this crisis, the Uruguayan government has announced the construction of a temporary dam to guarantee water supply and the acquisition of a portable desalination plant. It will also seek to accelerate pipe repairs to avoid losses. However, the rainfall forecast for the country is not encouraging, which has raised concerns about the continuity of water supply in the future.
This situation has generated a political debate in the country, where the opposition criticizes the government for taking late measures and proposes different long-term solutions, such as the construction of a reservoir in the Casupá stream or the Neptuno Project, which seeks to obtain water from the Rio de la Plata. Some citizens have protested against these proposals, considering them a privatization of the resource and expressing their dissatisfaction with the quality of the water supplied by OSE.